In the spring of 2005, I was “enjoying” a Law and Order: Special Victims Unit while my bride to be was celebrating her last few weeks of single life with her friends. While watching episode after episode I was also browsing the Internet for real estate on offer in the US and in Europe. For the first time in my memory of the first 3 seasons of the show, Detectives Stabler and Benson left New York City to hunt down a human trafficking ring selling children to pedophiles near the Czech border to Germany where I grew up.

“There is one timeless way of building. It is thousands of years old, and the same today as it has always been. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. It is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way.

I was intrigued by the certainty that marked the evangelical faith and I did encounter lively and energetic worship services and met many good people in evangelical church communities. Sometimes, I recognized the kind of peace, the freedom from internal contradictions described in the Timeless Way with people that were a perfect fit for the prescribed patterns. I also wanted to give due diligence to the claims of evangelicals, that if they are right, I’d be in eternal trouble.

What drew me in about the Timeless Way of Building is that it speaks about the act of human creation in a very unusual and very compelling way. It speaks of a quality that is objective and precise but cannot be named because there is not one word to fully encapsulate it. It speaks of a method that frees us from all methods and produces buildings and systems that are truly natural in their context.

Nature is built in the Timeless Way, Humans choose a mixed approach with mixed results. With acceptable outcomes predetermined we lock our selves out of the possibility of a truly life-giving systems for more people. We also forgo the possibility of ever becoming truly free. The timeless way does not assume anything and does not require us to get anywhere. It operates in the Now. What can we do Now. The possibilities and the freedom in the Now are endless if we don’t limit ourselves to predetermined outcomes.

My wife and I spent 4 days with about 600 queer Christians and Christian parents of queer kids. We heard story after story of agony and anguish from the abandonment, shaming, betrayal, despair, forced marriage and torture of their bodies, spirit and souls they experienced at the hands of their evangelical communities and families. These stories are rarely told in our churches. Other stories of queer agendas, grooming, pedophilia, degenerates, abominations, confusing pronouns and cheating at sports are told, believed and joked about.