Taking Care of Business

In our last post, we started out with “Taking Care of Business” by Bachman-Turner Overdrive, and I thought about kicking off this post with that same song.

I decided not to go there—a little BTO goes a long way—but, really, the tune would have fit right in with the subject of today’s post, because what we’re going to be talking about is the narthex in our new temple, and one of the main things you do in the narthex is take care of your business.

As you can see from the rendering, there’s going to be a lot of iconography in the narthex, and, in the weeks ahead, we’ll talk about all those images and the thinking behind them, but, right now, if you’ll look just to the right of the center of that rendering, you’ll see an alcove with water fountains, and that alcove leads to the bathrooms.

Here’s an overhead view of the same area:

And it may sound either creepy or clickbaity to be talking about bathrooms—and what we do in them—but since that’s just a fundamental part of our humanity, it’s always something about which Christians have been, well, concerned. And, historically, the way that concern has been expressed is by wondering if Christ Jesus, our Lord and Master, the Incarnate Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, ever, you know, had to go.

In the early centuries of the Faith, a lot of folks were convinced that never, ever happened.

For example, in the mid-fourth century, St Epiphanius of Salamis wrote a book called The Panarion. In that book, he methodically and thoroughly refuted 80 heresies. Heresy #77 was a perspective known as Apollinarianism. The Apollinarians taught, among other things, that, since Christ Jesus did not have a normal human body, He would never have needed to excuse Himself and go to the restroom.

But St Epiphanius argued—and, remember, he’s a glorified saint who is commemorated by the entire Church every year on May 12—that while our Lord and Master did, indeed, have a normal human body, He never had to do either Number One or Number Two because He had complete command over every aspect of His Normal Human Body.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Those Orthodox are soooo verrrrry weird.

But this isn’t just an Orthodox or even a Christian thing. About the time St Epiphanius was writing his book, the Jewish Rabbis were considering a similar question in connection with Deuteronomy 23.13-14. What those pious scholars were debating is exactly what happened when the People of Israel were out in the wilderness: specifically, when the Israelites ate the manna, the Divine Bread that came from heaven, would they then have needed to observe the latrine regulations outlined in The Torah?

Nope. Because the prevailing opinion among those experts was that “not one of them needed to relieve himself for those forty years” (Bamidbar Rabba 16.244).

But, even now, one quarter of the way into the twenty-first century, this is still a front and center topic for a lot of folks. And the way that all gets worked out is through the location of the bathrooms.

Of course, for a great many people, that just seems like a building code issue: you do whatever your local municipality requires. But many temples are located in areas that are outside any sort of municipal supervision.

And it’s always possible to apply for religious exemptions: That’s why, at St Seraphim’s, the OCA Cathedral in Dallas, the bathrooms are set apart from the main structure. Granted, it looks a bit like the facilities at a highway rest stop, but that’s because Bishop Dmitri of Blessed Memory did not want anyone answering the call of nature in the beautiful temple he and his community had built.

But no matter how holy you are, continence will only get you so far.

There’s a well-known monastic community in this country that is building a magnificent temple. However, the fathers almost had a parting of the ways with their principal design architect. The architect was insistent that there should be no bathrooms in the main temple area, and the fathers were, like, “Dude,” (yes, monastics, say dude) “We have five-hour services. Asceticism is one thing, but, when you gotta go, you gotta go.”

And we’re with the monks on this one. But it’s not just a practical issue about the recognition of the limits of human nature; it’s also a theological issue: After all, the Most Holy Trinity created our human nature and pronounced it Very Good. And even after all the damage and devastation inflicted by sin, Christ Jesus has redeemed our human nature, and enthroned it in the Kingdom.

So, even though there are aspects of our humanity that we feel are awkward and odd, even though our bodies are an endless source of humor and embarrassment, there is nothing about Us that is not Good and Very Good.

That’s why we have bathrooms in our temple. But since people are still people, we know how folks are going to act in those bathrooms: they’ll leave paper towels on the floor; they’ll splash water all over the counter; they forget to put the changing table back up; they won’t clean up after themselves in the stalls; and, hey, don’t even get us started about the urinals….

It’s like they forget that they are in a consecrated building. It’s like they think the bathrooms are not part of the temple.

So, to help them remember, we’re going to adorn the walls with murals—and, no, we’re not going to depict any saints in there, but we will have the floral background that you can already see in the conceptual renderings of the murals in the temple. We may also add some animals, since the bathrooms are just across the narthex from the Calming Room, and that space will have a Noah’s Ark theme.

But we will, for sure, have some angels on the walls of the bathrooms. That may give some people pause, but that’s the whole point—and, really, do you think there aren’t any of the Bodiless Powers in there right now?

And, speaking of angels, we’re gonna go ahead and fly on outta here with the great Ralph Stanley singing, “Angel Band”:

But if you’d like to one day use the facilities (with the angels) in our new temple, why not help us out with our project? You can join us in offering The Akathist for a New Temple (PDF/video). You can become a paid subscriber to this Substack; you can purchase some clothing from our online store, or you can donate directly to our Building Fund.

And, hey, we’ll even leave the seat down for you.