Like King Solomon's Temple, there are secrets to its design and the "Why of It".
The year is 1972. The teacher assumed that if he made me class president, I would, at least, attend Seminary. I ditched 49 out of the 54 twice weekly classes anyway, only to discover that high school graduation required passing all my classes, including Seminary.
The teacher thought he was a pretty funny guy. I thought of him as the short and skinny weasel guy with crumpled tie, standing between me and freedom. He seemed to take pleasure in telling me there was only one way he would graduate me from Seminary. "How about some extra credit, kid, Really Big Extra Credit", he smiled with way too many big white teeth.
"I want you to research and build, to scale, a model of King Solomon's Temple as it was in the wilderness," he handed me.
The internet, back in the seventies, was about as far along as I was in graduating, so research was limited to forcing me to read the Bible, at least, First Kings, Second Chronicle.
I don't know if it was the way he challenged me or the fact that since I can remember, I loved making models but I dived head first into the making of King Solomon's Temple.
It took five days and on the last possible day, I entered Seminary in a purple bath robe and terry cloth turban wrapped around my way long hair. Four husky football teammates (good friends hoping to see me graduate) followed. They carried on their shoulders, on long wooden stair handrails suspended by brass holders, like the Arc of the Covenant, a 3' x 5' slab of ¾" plywood, covered with glued on sand, hand-made palm trees out of light green construction paper and Q-Tips, toy sacrificial animals (from my little brother's plastic farm house) and toy soldiers (from the same little brother), painted in reds and blues and grey white garb to represent the Temple followers, scribes and priests.
The boys sat the model down carefully on the teacher's desk and stood sentinel, two on each side. The teacher stood speechless.
From somewhere through the cobwebs of Sunday-School, I remembered that a cubit was about 18 inches long.
"I present to you, oh wise one, my teacher, King Solomon's Temple, to scale." I held up my right arm and pulled the robe down. "From the tip of my fingers to my elbow is a cubit and this," holding up a popsicle stick with my left hand, is five cubits long."
I went on, "The Porch of the Temple is two popsicle sticks wide, that's twenty cubits. The Long Hall is eight popsicle sticks long." Some kid yelled out, "Forty!" "Correct," I said. "And the Holy of Holies, the 'Devir', is a cube, four popsicle sticks by four popsicle sticks raised on a dais four popsicle sticks high. Twenty by twenty by twenty," I bowed low.
Lots of high-fives, congratulatory applause and a heard of laughter brought a feint acknowledgement from the teacher. "Let's study this," he offered.
I stood there in turban and purple robe and smiled big at my seminary teacher. Like the High Priest described in the Bible, I waved my arms across the land. The walls of the Temple were carefully constructed in the requisite number of cloth and animal hides, cut from mom's sewing scraps and a hunk of Naugahide. Regally, I leaned over the model and parted the golden cloth veil of the Holy of Holies with my fingers, carefully and beckoned the teacher to come forward.
With thirty kids behind him whispering, he bent over and peeked inside.
There, a tiny Arc of the Covenant, covered with real gold leaf, the lid slightly ajar, glowed from the light of a hidden flashlight bulb.
I graduated high school, went to Europe to study comparative governments, went on a mission for a couple of years, got married, had a whole cluster of incredible women children and dived head first, sans purple robes, into the study of architecture.
And three years into those studies, I reexamined again Solomon's Temple, comparing the Holy of Holies to the King's Chamber in the Pyramids of Giza.
"Three, Four, Five. Again and again. It's everywhere!"
I saw the sacred Temple proportions everywhere. In nature, the Nautilus. In Temple design, the Holy of Holies: 20 x 20, The Long Hall: 40 x 30. The Diagonal: 50. Again! The Pythagorean Theorem. The Golden Section. The Harmonic Rule. The unending spiral.The Architect of King Solomon's Temple, according to the Bible and other records, was Hiram Abiff, son of a widow, sent by King Hiram of Tyre because the man possessed certain special skills and sacred knowledge passed onto him from "those that came before".
Hiram Abiff was killed for that knowledge while worshiping 'The Grand Architect of the Universe' at the Temple he had designed and built. He graduated to eternal life by giving up his life rather than divulge the secrets.
And all I had to do to graduate from high school was read the Bible and build a model of King Solomon's Temple.
I owe that short, skinny teacher a lot.
In Buda, Texas, on the edge of an extinct ancient ocean where waves etched long dead crustaceans into cascading limestone cliffs, sits a small and beautiful chapel.
Like King Solomon's Temple, there are secrets to its design and the "Why of It".
Sometimes, we find ourselves wondering why we're where we are, doing what we're doing and we wonder about the "Why of It."
Go. Sit in the body of the whale. Let nothing and everything wash over you. Open yourself to the secrets therein. Listen to your teachers. Build a model. Be the model in the model. Just build something.
PS . . . Seriously. Go to The Chapel Dulcinea. Read the Gospel of Don. Get to know Quixote.
There's no occasion for level or plumb line,
For trowel or gavel, for compass or square,
Our works are completed, the Ark safely seated,
And we shall be greeted as workmen most rare.
An old Mason's song.
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