Psalm 100:2
ah, the joys of home ownership
And I will understand in the unspotted way, when thou shalt come to me. I walked in the innocence of my heart, in the midst of my house (Psalm 100:2 DR)
If you own a home, you know it’s the worst. The absolute worst.
Sure, you have a place of your own. Sure, you can do what you want with it. Sure, there’s a certain satisfaction to be had in possessing and improving it.
But the maintenance is a beast.
The other day I discovered the the washing machine had malfunctioned in some way. It still cleaned the clothes (ostensibly…), but at some point or another it had overflowed. Had it only been water that would have been fine. Instead it was a greasy slimy mess of detergent.
I was made aware of this by moving some objects close to the washer and realizing they were coated in an interesting slime. I initially had my heart sink, worried that there was some leak coming from above, as this was several feet off the ground. But no leak was to be found. In a closer examination, I found that it was this weird detergent slime that had condensed on objects near the washer and had coalesced in little semi-dried pools around the washer.
Sigh.
A lot of bleach, a mudding scraper and a trash pickup later and it’s been taken care. But I now will always be wary of what I find in the basement.
Our houses—whether they be physical or spiritual—require maintenance. St. Augustine sees this verse as pertaining to either the Church herself (the house) since Christ walks in her, or to the inner life. And just like a mold infestation might drive you out of doors, so too sin:
What is the innocence of the heart? The middle of his house? Whoever has a bad house in this, is driven out of doors. For whoever is oppressed within his heart by a bad conscience, just as any man in consequence of the overflow of a waterspout or of smoke goes out of his house, suffers not himself to dwell therein; so he who has not a quiet heart, cannot happily dwell in his heart. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 100, 3.)
The reason that we ultimately have to abandon our houses in many cases is because they are too small too dwell with the problem. Similarly sin narrows the room of our inner house, and only innocence can expand it.
In this respect the Church as Christ’s house must needs be pure, for otherwise there is no room for him to walk therein. As St Augustine says: The whole of righteousness, therefore, is reduced to the one word, innocence. (ibid.)
For this animation I took the cue from St. Augustine vis-a-vis Christ walking in the midst of the Church, as well as having sufficient room in which to dwell.
I found these great images from the Beatus Facundus, an illuminated apocalypse from 8th century Spain. There are many of these illustrated apocalypses, and I think the illustrations and illuminations are quite striking both in terms of their artistic style and evocation.
I chose this image of the Agnus Dei from folio 117v and cut it out in Photoshop. I also isolated the structure from folio 184v and composited in images of the saints from folio 205 to create an entirely new scene which nevertheless retains the style of the Beatus Facundus.
The animation was just some simple position keyframing with rotation for the Agnus Dei, and some basic looping rotation for the saints. I utilized some text on a path for the words innocence, which I thought worked well to give it some Trinitarian undertones.
Enjoy.
And I will understand in the unspotted way, when thou shalt come to me. I walked in the innocence of my heart, in the midst of my house.
(Psalm 100:2 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: