Building a Home

Everybody begins life with a very different set of starting circumstances.  We are born in different areas, to different parents, at different times, with different predilections, strengths, weaknesses, etc.  These circumstances of our births form the foundations of our lives.  Because everyone gets a different setup for life, a different foundation, so to speak, we should take care not to judge others based on our own limited experiences.  If we want to build two homes on very different foundations, we can't expect the buildings to be identical.  But at the same time, the principles of building remain the same, and both buildings are guided by the same end goal (which is providing shelter in the case of home-building).



Now comes the hard part.  Some structural components are going to be necessary for every home, while others will vary from home to home based on the different foundations.  How do you determine what aspects need to be shared by all homes, and what aspects should be different to account for the different foundations?  And maybe some things that most people desire in a home could be impossible on certain foundations.  Some construction techniques could be very detrimental, or could be a poor choice for certain foundations, and make the house unstable and dangerous.  How do we know?

A seventeenth century Lutheran scholar, Peter Meiderlin, wrote, "in necesariis Unitatem, in non-necessariis Libertatem, in utrisque Charitatem," which translates to "in essentials, Unity, in non-essentials, Liberty, in both, Charity."  I really love the sentiment, and it seems to make a lot of sense.  But the big question remains, what is essential?  I had a teacher once suggest that the world often tends to want liberty in essentials while wanting all to conform in unity in the non-essentials.

It's also interesting to think of the tacet assumption that liberty and unity (or freedom and equality in today's politispeak) can be though of as opposites.  I'll have to think about that one some more.