A helpful analogy from Fieldy

The body as house - in stages

1. My house is a perfectly fine house though rather small and very plain. But there's nothing wrong with it. Additionally, plans for a massive extension, expansion, and beautification programme have been passed. The day is coming when, all being well, I will be living in a mansion set in hundreds of acres with golf courses, well-stocked libraries with finest port and leather backed chairs, swimming pools, billiard rooms, music chambers and much more besides.

2. Before this can happen, however, the floods and hurricanes arrive and my little house is devastated, left disgustingly filthy and terribly dangerous.

3. I'm re-housed, with lots of others, in a sports hall far away. Compared to my ruined house, this is very, very comfortable - it's dry and safe and warm and all sorts of arrangements are made for my convenience and pleasure.

3.a. So if you ask me, while I'm facing my ruined house, "where would you rather be?", then I shall certainly answer, "the sports hall, which is far better."

3.b. If, on the other hand, you ask me whether the sports hall is all I want, then I shall reply, "No, not at all. I feel naked. After all, strictly speaking, I'm homeless. It's all very lovely and so on but it's not how things are meant to be.

4. The day comes when a trumpet messenger arrives to announce that the filth has finally be cleansed, the dangers removed, and out of the ruins of my former house - and taking up and using what was there before - all has been made new. When I arrive to take up residence I find, of course, that what awaits me is the mansion of the early plans.

Apols, Oak Hillers, if I was unclear yesterday. Stage 3 is what we call "the intermediate state".

(Though I confess that even in "the intermediate state" it is hard to see how a sports hall suffices as an image... Couldn't we have been lodged in a hotel or something ?)

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