On Being Red-Tagged and the "Stop Work" Order

ON BEING RED TAGGED AND THE “STOP WORK” ORDER

Nine years ago, Greg and I started to build a house high up in a tree on our British Columbia Gulf Islands rural property. Insulated and heated, it had a pitched roof, big picture windows at eye-level with the birds, rustic cedar shake siding, granite counter tops, ceramic tile, and polished “100-year-old barn board” flooring. Outside of this enclosed space we built an outside deck and also a full bathroom just down the ladder at ground level. Here we planned to live while we contemplated future building and writing projects on our little island!

Halfway through the project, however, we called for a building inspection and the inspector responded by posting the dreaded “Red Tag.” In our province, this amounts to a “Stop Work Immediately” order.” While we had ensured that the treehouse itself was engineered for safety, no engineer could guarantee the ongoing integrity of the foundation which was, in fact, a tree susceptible to lightning, fire, and windstorms. Birds and raccoons and squirrels are the usual occupants of our trees. Humans are supposedly meant to live on the ground (or on sailboats, for that matter) but there can be no official permit for a house meant for humans who want to live in a tree. At least, not on our island.

However, the way Greg and I saw it, the Red Tag meant “stop work for the moment”; it did not mean “stop work forever.” It gave us a chance to rethink and to re-vision. We decided to consult with the Building Inspector (who turned out to be a reasonable fellow, after all!) on finding a way forward. In the end, he decided that if we also built a house on the ground, we would be permitted to complete the house in the tree. As long as the treehouse had no more than a 100 square feet of enclosed space, it was considered an outbuilding and would not require a permit.

With that in mind, we removed the window glass in the rest of the treehouse and these became “covered decks” open to the fresh air. We also built a bigger little house on the ground and aren’t we glad we did! When guests came to stay and I needed some solitude, I simply packed up my laptop and journals and found some quiet in the treehouse. It was there that I finished writing Noah Traditions in the Dead Sea Scrolls and it was there that the idea for a book of meditations on suffering in the Dead Sea Scrolls was born.

That certainly ended well but now we have been “Red Tagged” once again! This time, it is this new writing project. Two editors have spoken to me by e-mail and by telephone in the past two weeks. While they enjoyed reading the sample chapters I sent (see older blog postings on “Breaking Waves” and “The Voice that is Silenced”), the terminology of “Dead Sea Scrolls” is, apparently, too academic as a meditational book geared to a general Christian readership. On the other hand, the content of the chapters is deemed too “devotional” and, therefore, unsuitable as an academic book on the Scrolls.

So, what I have in my possession is, apparently, a misfit, a partially completed manuscript of an oddly shaped book that is neither completely at home in the academy nor in the church. I am wondering what to do next. Either I could persist in seeking that sympathetic publisher who sees the potential for a cross-over book that could become a bestseller because it is the first of its kind and fits a perfect niche (!) . . . or I begin re-visioning and reshaping, perhaps broadening the scope beyond “Suffering” and using language such as “Ancient Voices” in the title rather than “Dead Sea Scrolls.

Yet, if the experience with the treehouse taught me anything, it is that “Red Tags” can be the doorway to the realization of even bigger dreams. The “house on the ground” gave us lots of space for family and friends to visit and the “house in the tree” was better after undergoing re-design. So it might be with this book.

On another note, there has been some good news. My application for a two year externally funded postdoctoral fellowship was recently approved for my new scholarly project beginning in September 2009, The Languages of Hospitality and Violence Concerning the Outsider: Multilingual Conversations in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This means that I am able to conduct this research right here at T.W.U. with the help of a graduate student assistant from the M.A. in Biblical Studies program.

In the meantime, my husband and I are off to Guatemala this Wednesday with a group of mostly university-aged students. We plan to collect many more stories along the way.  

You are welcome to respond with thoughts and suggestions to Dorothy.Peters@twu.ca.