Plastic Chairs and Glass Houses
I like modern design. You know, the kind of architecture and furniture that is so cool and cutting-edge that it looks exactly as if it were designed in the middle of the 20th Century. Actually, they have a name for modern looking architecture and furniture that was designed in the middle of the 20th Century. It’s called…wait for it…Mid-Century Modern.
Genius.
You’ve probably seen this sort of design before. Stuff like clocks with no numbers on them, or a couch with cushions so square that it appears painful to sit on. That’s the type stuff I like. Most of this furniture is so wildly expensive that I can only look at it and dream. Fortunately for me, there’s a place to view this type of modern furniture right from the comfort of my office. It’s called the internet. And on this internet there are people so concerned with helping me to view and possibly purchase modern design that they send it right to my inbox every day. They call themselves Fab.com.
One day recently, Fab’s header was advertising something called “The Japanese Design Shop.” The advertisement read simply “God Is In The Detail.”
God is in the detail.
Also Genius.
My first thought was, isn’t their supposed to be an “s” at the end of that. My second thought was, I thought the Devil was in the details?
Now I’m really confused. So, I consulted another group of people concerned with helping me on the internet. Google. Google says that “God is in the detail” is actually an idiom. An idiom (according to Google) is: a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words.
Needless to say, that didn’t help me much.
So, I turned to another completely reliable source: Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia the phrase has been attributed to a number of individuals, most notably German born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Ludwig is quite an interesting fellow. He was the last director of the German Bauhaus and along with Frank Lloyd Wright is considered one of the masters of modern architecture.
Mid-Century Modern architects such a Ludwig Mies van der Rohe stress extreme simplicity and the elimination of “unnecessary detail.” Nowhere is this more evident than perhaps his most famous work
the Farnsworth House. (shown below)
The Farnsworth House is essentially a big glass box.
When you’ve stripped away all adornment, you’re really left with nothing but the details, so you’d better pay attention to them. I think that’s a little like how we relate to God.
The prophet Elijah experienced God not in the storm, the earthquake or the fire, but rather the still small voice. It’s not that God wasn’t in the storm, earthquake and fire. He most certainly was. As the apostle Paul says, God is “over all and through all and in all.”
All. That’s pretty clear. Nothing vague about it.
However, I think God is fundamentally something we experience. And we don’t really experience grand theological concepts do we? What we do experience are intimate moments with family, friends and sometimes even complete strangers.
An inside joke
The lyrics to our favorite song
Dinner with our spouse
The laughter of a child
A door held open when our hands are full
Someone who listens, really listens
A word of encouragement
A helping hand
A shared smile
I think this is why Jesus was so revolutionary. Jesus got to know people on a personal level. He rubbed mud on the eyes of a blind man to restore his sight. He ate with “sinners”. He touched lepers. He talked to the woman at the well. He washed the disciples feet. He suggested those without sin should cast the first stone. Jesus knew it wasn’t the big things, it was the small.
We don’t experience compassion. We experience a friend right there beside us at our darkest hour. We don’t experience love. We experience quality time with a good friend. We experience actions, not concepts.
Whatever we experience though, if it’s true, if it’s honest, if it’s real, these are experiences with the divine. Sometimes we just have to get all the clutter out of the way to see that
God is in the detail.
Jim Childs - June 11, 2013 2:52 am
The Shakers seemed to understand, didn’t they? Oh, the simple and pure design, sure – but I also mean in the simple and pure living.
It took me a long time to begin appreciating modern design. Partly, I think, because the context most of us first encountered modernism in was institutional – or commercial. Things certainly not particularly about experiences rather than concepts.
Of course, this isn’t the fault of the designers. Maybe the reason modernism is in a revival is because the ordinary individual has finally reached the stage where he/she is ready to listen to what was first said in the last century.
marcher - June 13, 2013 3:15 am
Good thoughts Jim.
Modern design (at least in the 20th Century) was like everything else, it was a reaction to what came before. The highly ornate Victorian era naturally led to the reaction of modernism. You’re right too that there’s a clinical feel to much of it. It’s not natural. They took a lot of the “life” out of it at first. “Form follows function” and “less is more” became the dictate.
I just like the clean, symmetrical, orderly aspect of it. It’s a calming influence in a world that’s far too chaotic sometimes.
I guess I was trying to say that when you create an empty room, without distraction, when we strip all that extraneous stuff away, what are we left with? At our core? That’s where we encounter God.
Thanks for reading!