I’ve been pondering altars recently. Altars are strewn across the landscape of the Hebrew scripture. Noah builds an altar when he leaves the ark, Abraham when he arrives in Cannan, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Elijah, and others. Altars are built to thank God, or to mark a promise kept or a presence felt.

We read about one of these altars at church on Sunday. Jacob connives to cheat his brother out of his birthright. Not surprisingly, his brother is furious, and Jacob flees, fearing for his life (Genesis 28:10-22). But even fleeing people need to sleep. He chooses a stone for a pillow and as he sleeps, he dreams—a ladder reaching to heaven with angels going up and down on it. God speaks to him promising a blessing much greater than the one he had just stolen.

When he awakens in the morning, he takes his stone pillow and makes a standing pillar of it. He is awed by God’s presence and pours oil on the stone, naming the place Beth-El, the House of God.

The story made me think of a stone on my bookshelf, far too small to be a pillow, but one that reminds me of God’s presence and support. This stone looks like, and therefore stands in for, a weathered wooden shake shingle. That, in turn, represents an epiphany in in my life. I mounted the stone on a wooden base to be a reminder to me—a miniature altar.

When I was a teenager, we visited cousins in West Virginia every fall. After Sunday dinner we young people usually took a walk along a rarely-traveled dirt road where we passed an old, deserted house. In a more populated area, it would been barricaded with yellow “danger” tape, but on that back road, no one bothered. It called to us, and we always took time to explore it. The roof had wooden shake shingles, not for the sake of looking rustic, but because that was what was used when the house was built. Some of the shingles had rotted and fallen off or blown away.

I remember standing on the second floor, looking up through holes to the leafy branches of the trees above, silhouetted against the blue sky. The rustic, irregular pattern made by missing shingles and patches of tree and sky fascinated me. I imagined having a house with a roof like that “when I grew up,” covered by random groupings of shingles offering a view to the sky. Large plate glass panels would protect the rooms below and allow for seeing the weathered wood, trees, and sky. I thought of it from time to time, even going so far as imagining how I might decorate the rooms below that unique ceiling. But over time the memory faded into oblivion.

Years later, married and with two young sons, Wayne and I attended a marriage retreat sponsored by the church we were attending. The last morning of the retreat, the leaders introduced us to a guided meditation, something I had never participated in before. I entered the process without hesitation and a lot of curiosity. What would it be like? What might we be asked to do? The leader began by asking us to take an imagined walk in whatever setting we choose. I walked through a field of wild grass and flowers. When the leader suggested that we choose something from our surroundings to take with us, I looked down and saw a shingle like those of the old, abandoned house and bent to pick it up. I looked at it—its weathered, irregular appearance, the grain of the wood. It felt smooth, organic, real. Why that long-ago memory popped into my mind, I have no idea, but there I stood, examining the shingle. Our “walk” continued and we were invited to imagine meeting Jesus. It was suggested that we give him what we found. I imagined looking at its weathered beauty together and then I offered it to him.

At this point, the meditation went off script. Instead of receiving my gift as I expected (and probably the meditation leader too), he gave it back to me. He told me that I had been given the gift of seeing beauty in many things, that the gift was mine, that I was to treasure this gift and use it. To say I was taken off guard, is an understatement. I was startled, wordless. I began to cry, not as part of the imagined exercise, but in real life. Not just a few tears trickling down my cheeks to be furtively wiped away before anyone else saw them, but big sloppy tears, accompanied by an equally runny nose. I was completely oblivious to whatever we were instructed to do next. All I could do was cry.

When I finally became conscious of my surroundings, Wayne was the only other person in the room. All the others had left. Wayne sat beside me, not saying anything, simply being there with his solid presence. I told him what had happened, but was not ready to talk with anyone else about my fresh and powerful encounter.

All my life I had struggled with the desire to make things “pretty”—bouquets for mother, tea parties for family, nicely decorated rooms. These urges had sometimes been supported—Grandma helped me find just the right vase for a bouquet, Mother complimented me on a cake I decorated. More often my desires to fix up had been pushed aside as not important—frivolous daydreams, beyond our budget, or not important on the scale of life’s issues. Beauty wasn’t considered wrong, but it wasn’t a valid goal for a little Mennonite girl.

I learned that lesson well. In Botswana a friend stopped by our flat one morning when we were gone and told me that she had looked in the window and seen our placemats and cloth napkins on the table along with a bowl of fruit. She said it made her feel happy that there were people who valued such things, even though she herself didn’t take the effort. I halfway heard her, but felt that she, like Mary, was choosing the better part, focusing fully on her teaching while I was the distracted Martha.[1] Often, I felt that my desires were unimportant, that there were much more significant things to be concerned about like feeding the hungry and caring for those who were in need. Although no one ever said it in so many words, I had come to believe my desires were unimportant—trivial and frivolous interests to be indulged only when all else was done, far down on the list of life’s priorities.

Sitting with Wayne in that empty room, I knew that I had been changed. Never had this part of myself that sought out and loved beauty been so powerfully affirmed—not just affirmed, but handed back to me as an imperative and blessed. Never before had I realized how soul-deep those desires were. Seeing beauty was not trivial but a God-given gift. Creating beauty was a worthy task.

No lesson is ever learned completely in one step. Jacob did not always trust the promise God made to him. I didn’t stride forward, a confident ambassador of finding or creating beauty everywhere I went. But something had shifted. I held that part of myself with new respect and understanding. Keeping a reminder on my bookshelves helps me even now. 

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[1] Luke 10:38-42, the story of Jesus visiting the home of two sisters, Mary and Martha. Mary sat at Jesus’ feet listened to him teach while Martha busied herself preparing a meal. When Martha complained that Mary was not helping her, Jesus rebuked Martha saying that she was distracted by many things while Mary had chosen “the better part,” which wouldn’t be taken away from her.