Similitudes

The House of Abraham

Douglas Wilson

he plain was desolate, with short scrub grass everywhere. It was cold, and the sun seemed pale to me. The grass around me was not moving very much; the wind was weak. The scene was peaceful, but I was still uncomfortable watching it.

A solitary figure stood, about two hundred yards away from me, looking at some blueprints that had been given to him. I don't know where he got them, or how I knew they were blueprints, but that's what they were. As I watched, he rolled the prints up, put them under his arm, looked up to the heavens, and I could see that he believed God. I saw only an empty plain beneath an empty sky, but he obviously was looking at something else.

I rubbed my eyes, and when I looked up again the solitary figure was gone; it seemed he had been dead for several centuries. Where he had stood was now a teeming mass of people, busily working. They obviously knew their work; they were clearly experienced at moving together. At the same time, the way they moved together indicated to me that they had learned their craft as slaves. They looked like ants swarming, and out of the swarm a building had begun to rise, with a ramshackle scaffolding all around it. It was difficult even to see the building; the scaffolding enveloped the building, and workers covered the scaffolding. Still, even with the view obscured, the building looked to be a great house of some sort, of breathtaking size. Or, rather, it would be of breathtaking size when it was done.

Off to the side, faithful in the work of this house, was a man who had the same demeanor as the man with the blueprints. He was directing the work with a meticulous care. You could see that he cared very much about the progress of the building, although he was clearly exasperated at times with the behavior of his workers.

I shook my head, and centuries more fell to the ground. I do not know how many years had gone by, but the swarming had slowed down considerably. The director off to the side was gone, and no one was standing there in his place. But after a time, others came. They wore the same kind of clothing that he had, so it was easy to assume they were directors. They certainly acted as though they were in charge. But as they gave their orders and commands, a truly odd thing began to happen. The scaffolding continued to grow and thicken, but from what I could see of the building, the work on it had almost ceased. A few workers here and there still kept at it, but considering the size of the building, they looked terribly alone.

Not only did the scaffolding grow in size, it began to look more and more like something else. Those on the scaffolding no longer looked like workers at a construction site; they looked as though they lived there, as though they were inhabiting a city built on stilts. I could see countless homes developing within the nooks and crannies of the platforms. Why would anyone want to do that? I wondered.

I began to walk slowly around the building. It would take aeons, but the dream was slow and I had the time. Centuries more passed, and the scaffolding grew at double the rate of the house. When I was about halfway around, I saw a fierce commotion in a certain sector of the scaffolding, on the side closest to me. It looked like some sort of tumult or riot. The crowd of workers had the intensity of murder about them. After a short time, the commotion stopped, and I surmised their little murder had been accomplished. At least, all the workers slowly headed back to their homes in the scaffolding.

I continued to walk, and just a few years passed. I looked off to my left and saw a group of people clustered in a knot, about halfway between the building and the path I was walking. They were engaged in what looked like a fierce debate. I changed direction slightly, angling closer to the building so I could overhear.

It was not surprising to find a man standing at the center of this group of people, the cause of the trouble, and I noted with surprise that he was holding some blueprints. I hadn't seen anyone with prints for quite some time. He wasn't dressed the same as that earlier director, but he certainly looked like him -- in his face especially. Those arguing with him had the clothes, but they had the indolent look of the loungers on the scaffolding.

"The Lord of this House has come," the man said. "And before you killed Him, He promised that the work on His House would resume in earnest, the scaffolding would come down, and all the wood burned."

Someone near the back of the group muttered, " Fool! " Another, who obviously shared the sentiment, asked a question with the same tone of hostility. "And what do you mean by 'scaffolding' and 'wood for burning'?"

The man with the prints turned and pointed at the platforms and poles, makeshift homes, and unoccupied workers. "There."

"And what do you mean by 'His House'?"

He pointed to the center of the site. "There."

I could hardly see the House any more, and it was clear that the man's disputants could see nothing at all. Some of them threw their hands up in the air in total exasperation. But still, there were several who seemed to want to make peace with him. One of them stepped forward.

"I believe in the Lord of the House, just as you do. He should not have been killed. But the 'scaffolding' you want to destroy to is part of the House. Why would the director have had us build it all for nothing?"

The man with the prints shook his head. "No, it must all come down."

"But why ?"

"From now on," the man said, looking around, "the work must be done on the inside."