Begin with No-thing
Photo by Rick Donhauser
Our home was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s first Prairie style house built in 1901, the famous Ward Willits house in Highland Park, Illinois.
We love the simplicity, rhythm, and silence it represents, as well as the protection afforded by the hip roof and wide overhangs. We are inspired by the creativity and unity displayed by the horizontal trim, bands of windows, and by the design’s integration with the outdoors.
Unbeknownst to us, one of Wright’s Prairie School clients, Mrs. Avery (Queen) Coonley, is said to have perceived in his work the “countenance of Principle.”¹ More than 100 years later, we would come to wholeheartedly agree.
When my husband and I were building our much smaller version of this house, we planned a beautiful open staircase, one that would be faithful to Prairie style architecture.
Our builder assumed that a half-wall would define the balcony and stairwell, but this solution was too abrupt and barren for the historic style. Although we considered the balustrades and newel posts offered by our local lumber yard, they were either too ornate or too plain, and they were all made of traditional oak.
Oak would not do. We wanted the interior of our home to be as light-filled as possible. This made maple our clear choice for flooring and trim, due to its refined grain and its ability to reflect more light than most other wood species.
A custom design was beyond our budget, and we didn’t have the woodworking skills or the time to build it ourselves. We couldn’t even research options on the web because, in 1990-1991, there was no internet available to us!
Consciousness, the immutable starting point
This was not the first time we were stumped during our design and build. We had seen several difficult challenges resolve with our acknowledgement of what ancient sages have revealed and what cutting edge quantum physicists have confirmed: universal (divine) consciousness constitutes everything in existence. The Bible boldly hints at the same truth:
...the things which are seen
[are] not made out of things that do appear.
— Hebrews 11:3 KJV
We look not at the things which are seen,
but at the things which are not seen,
for the things which are seen are temporal,
but the things which are not seen are eternal.
—II Corinthians 4:18 KJV
We were confident that everything is eternally known to divine consciousness—Omniscience—and that the answer would appear in a useful way. We left it there, not knowing how it would work out, only confident that it would work out.
Certainty is the power
that draws the Light into your life…
The Light of the Creator
becomes [practical] in our lives
to the degree
that we have certainty of its presence.²
— Michael Berg
You can imagine our delight when, as we awaited inspiration, a mailing arrived that introduced a stunningly simple Prairie style design of maple stair parts. Yes, maple. And they were available with our slight modification request, at a price we could afford.
What were the odds? Could the timing have been more perfect? To us, this appearance was divine Provision and Precision in action—yet another confirmation during our build of the awesome declaration in the Bible that says,
Except the Lord build the house,
they labour in vain that build it.
— Psalms 127:1 JPS
Some qualities of consciousness in motion: Protection, Structure, Orderliness, Beauty, Simplicity, Strength, Rhythm, and Balance.
Photo by Expressions of Joy
For us, the ideal staircase symbolizes such invisible ‘things’ as Protection, Structure, Orderliness, Beauty, Simplicity, Strength, Rhythm, and Balance.
When rightly viewed,
all natural things,
from the sand on the seashore
to the stars in the heavens,
are formations of Spirit and are spiritual.
So also is everything, from a pin to a palace—
including houses and lands and money—
when they are correctly understood.³
—Martha Wilcox
Matter [is] the visibility of Spirit.⁴
– Richard Booker
I have seen that the two worlds are one.⁵
— Rumi
Spiritual causation is the one question to be considered,
for more than all others
spiritual causation relates to human progress.⁶
— Mary Baker Eddy
[I] found myself looking about me, through the windows at the houses across the way; and I discovered that those houses were not necessarily mere structures of brick and stone, but they too, were expressions of ideas of beauty and comfort—ideas which the architect through [acrhitectural] training was able to manifest for our use.
These houses could never have existed except for the ideas which they represented, or the Mind which conceived them. I would never have recognized this fact without the capacity to think—the faculty of ‘awareness.’ I was conscious of them and therefore they existed for me.
I recalled what that old philosopher, Descartes, once said, "I think; therefore, I am." I began to see that my consciousness constituted my world and that my world was my consciousness and no more.⁷
— Phoebe Roberts Hedrick
Waves of the Ocean
[1] Yukio Futagawa, Frank Lloyd Wright Monograph, Volume III 1907-1913, (A.D.A. EDITA, 1987), introduction by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer
[2] Michael Berg, Secrets of the Zohar, (The Kabbalah Center, 2007), p. 77
[3] Martha Wilcox, Association Address of 1935, Section 3. Scientific Translation, (The Bookmark, 1986), p. 22
[4] Richard Booker, An Orientation Course in Christian Science, (The Institute of Metaphysical Science, unpublished), p. 57
[5] Laleh Bakhtiar, Rumi’s Original Sufi Enneagram, p. 17 https://ia800703.us.archive.org/7/items/RumisOriginalSufiEnneagram2/Rumi%E2%80%99s%20Original%20Sufi%20Enneagram%201.pdf 08.08.2022
[6] Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 170
[7] Phoebe Roberts Hedrick, Renascence, The Laird Letter, (The Institute of Metaphysical Science, September/October 1976, Vol 28, No. 5), p. 4
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