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Home Inspection as a Spiritual Metaphor - July 25, 2007
I was clearly on edge. My husband kept saying not to worry so much about the home inspection. It wasn't a house showing, the real estate man said. You don't have to dust. They would not be looking for cosmetic things, just structural and mechanical things.
True. But to do that, the home inspector, and the new homeowners, would be poking their noses into every nook and cranny of our home: dirty drawers, messy cupboards, spider webs at the back of long-untouched shelves, rust and raunchy build up in the back corner of the basement pantry.
Doesn't everyone have places in their house they'd rather no one else saw? The hidden places where, if you die in a sudden accident, you hope your best friend, sister or mother will come over and quickly clean. The places where snoopy guests might peek but you can comfort yourself knowing that if they do peek, their peccadillo is far worse than your less-than-Mom's good housekeeping.
A home inspection is like a report card for homeowners. It gives you feedback on everything that you have done in the years you have owned your home. For the first time in my life, I was thankful for the extra lengths my husband tends to go to in making sure things are done right and made extra strong: nobody has to worry about our deck falling down. The six by six pressure treated posts my husband used probably went beyond that required by code. With inspection breathing down my back, I was at last thankful for what seemed to me to be Stuart's obsessive worries when he rewired the house. If I worried about spider webs and gross places, Stuart always was one to fret "I don't want the next guy who lives here to cuss me out for my jack-legged way of fixing things."
A home inspection is the ultimate SAT test that determines a lot of things in the days ahead: whether the home sale goes forward, whether you get stalled and bogged down in costly repairs and upgrades, or negotiations with the buyer regarding same.
But mainly I was just worried about being clean. You know: the yucky stuff that sometimes accumulates under your sink, especially if you are like me and you have a compost pile instead of a garbage disposal and you always collect your garbage under your sink before you carry it to the compost pile.
The spiritual metaphors are obvious: how long has it been since I did an inspection of my spiritual life? Weekly times of "confession" in worship services are good times to do that, along with every time you take communion (Eucharist or Lord's Supper) or engage in another religious ritual.
But too often these rituals become old hat. Have I done a deep-down personal and private examination of the very structure of my faith? How have the practices--what I've been doing for upkeep in my spiritual life--contributed to my "soul health?"
Ultimately, this is far more important than any physical home inspection we go through.
And by the way, we passed, with two things noted on the inspection report to buyers. We had to have the air conditioner and furnace serviced, but we should have had that done anyway. The house also tested positive for radon, and we have to have that taken care of, but we were kind of expecting that. A fan/vacuum/ventilation system will have to be installed to take care of the toxic air.
If you've been doing pretty well with your ongoing spiritual upkeep, perhaps a "faith examination" will also only call for some tweaking and fine tuning, or bring to light a need to get rid of some "toxic" area of your life. Perhaps your examination will prod you to resume your time of meditation, and set aside time for prayer: things that, like with a home inspection, you needed to be taking care of anyway.
Contributed by Melodie Davis: [email protected] Melodie is the author of eight books and writes a syndicated newspaper column, Another Way
I was clearly on edge. My husband kept saying not to worry so much about the home inspection. It wasn't a house showing, the real estate man said. You don't have to dust. They would not be looking for cosmetic things, just structural and mechanical things.
True. But to do that, the home inspector, and the new homeowners, would be poking their noses into every nook and cranny of our home: dirty drawers, messy cupboards, spider webs at the back of long-untouched shelves, rust and raunchy build up in the back corner of the basement pantry.
Doesn't everyone have places in their house they'd rather no one else saw? The hidden places where, if you die in a sudden accident, you hope your best friend, sister or mother will come over and quickly clean. The places where snoopy guests might peek but you can comfort yourself knowing that if they do peek, their peccadillo is far worse than your less-than-Mom's good housekeeping.
A home inspection is like a report card for homeowners. It gives you feedback on everything that you have done in the years you have owned your home. For the first time in my life, I was thankful for the extra lengths my husband tends to go to in making sure things are done right and made extra strong: nobody has to worry about our deck falling down. The six by six pressure treated posts my husband used probably went beyond that required by code. With inspection breathing down my back, I was at last thankful for what seemed to me to be Stuart's obsessive worries when he rewired the house. If I worried about spider webs and gross places, Stuart always was one to fret "I don't want the next guy who lives here to cuss me out for my jack-legged way of fixing things."
A home inspection is the ultimate SAT test that determines a lot of things in the days ahead: whether the home sale goes forward, whether you get stalled and bogged down in costly repairs and upgrades, or negotiations with the buyer regarding same.
But mainly I was just worried about being clean. You know: the yucky stuff that sometimes accumulates under your sink, especially if you are like me and you have a compost pile instead of a garbage disposal and you always collect your garbage under your sink before you carry it to the compost pile.
The spiritual metaphors are obvious: how long has it been since I did an inspection of my spiritual life? Weekly times of "confession" in worship services are good times to do that, along with every time you take communion (Eucharist or Lord's Supper) or engage in another religious ritual.
But too often these rituals become old hat. Have I done a deep-down personal and private examination of the very structure of my faith? How have the practices--what I've been doing for upkeep in my spiritual life--contributed to my "soul health?"
Ultimately, this is far more important than any physical home inspection we go through.
And by the way, we passed, with two things noted on the inspection report to buyers. We had to have the air conditioner and furnace serviced, but we should have had that done anyway. The house also tested positive for radon, and we have to have that taken care of, but we were kind of expecting that. A fan/vacuum/ventilation system will have to be installed to take care of the toxic air.
If you've been doing pretty well with your ongoing spiritual upkeep, perhaps a "faith examination" will also only call for some tweaking and fine tuning, or bring to light a need to get rid of some "toxic" area of your life. Perhaps your examination will prod you to resume your time of meditation, and set aside time for prayer: things that, like with a home inspection, you needed to be taking care of anyway.
Contributed by Melodie Davis: [email protected] Melodie is the author of eight books and writes a syndicated newspaper column, Another Way
