Obscured by rising towers, they loiter on street corners or cling to pockets of land. They’ve been abandoned, neglected, passed over for something bigger, better and taller. Their rusted roofs are pierced with a thousand holes. Their wooden-frames tilt right, or is it left? Clay-covered lattice walls crumble gracefully into piles of rubble, while their once brightly covered facades are faded, bleached by the sun and scrubbed by stormy torrents. With barred windows and broken doors, they’ve become a haunt for the homeless, drunks and pop-up brothels.

Their history is being overshadowed, swallowed up in the name of progress. Three and four storey buildings are being replaced by green and gold metallic-windowed high-rises. Steel-clad buildings and apartment blocks are reforming the Ulaanbaatar skyline. Tall cranes testify to a city undergoing change although concrete skeletons speak of those who’ve made a beginning but failed to complete their project.

These are natural aspects of growth and development and, while society must move forward, there are also dangers.

The ancients still stand, refusing to die, but how long before they slip, overshadowed and unnoticed, from our view. Today they can still prompt people to remember that they once accommodated life with all its sorrows and joys. They articulate the closeness of the past. But the buildings are not simply a narrative of outdated events and its relics, they also anchor the Mongolians to this place, to their culture and its history. Even more than that, appreciating and remembering history can cause us, if we allow it, to enter its history today, to let it shape our future and create something new.

Watching Mongolia change reminds me of a danger I face in my life as a Christian. My faith in God is anchored in the ancient covenant that God fulfilled through Jesus Christ. And yet life daily throws a constant stream of new fads and trends at me, even Christian trends! Each vies for my attention, threatening to distract me and overshadow the history that shapes the precious parts of my identity in God.

The gospel message is unchanging. In one sense it is completely unaffected by society’s paradigm shifts. And yet it is always wholly relevant, wholly fresh, speaking its ancient word into the context of the newness of this and every society in the world.

A group of young professional Mongolians are alerting society to the imminent danger they face as old buildings decay.  They are calling for buildings of note to be saved and restored. Some enthusiastic entrepreneurs are even taking shabby 1960s apartment buildings, highlighting their unique features and beginning to refurbish them. Retaining their essential character, these buildings honour and celebrate the old while being fully adapted to today’s generation.

 

 

Copyright© Gillian Newham, 2018

“all rights reserved”