Creating Sacred Space

The term, “sacred space” gets thrown around a fair bit these days- but what does it really mean? People talk about the chapel at St. John’s as a place of peace, somewhere they can go to get away from the chaos of classes and assignments to rest, reconnecting with God and themselves. Though God is everywhere, this particular space is sacred because it has been set apart since its inception to be place for people to meet the Holy One, bringing before God all their fears, anxieties, joys, and hopes.

Space, I believe, carries a story in the same way that a person does. Our chapel carries the story of connecting students with the Holy One, becoming a home for the wanderer, the doubter, and the lonely. In this space, people have celebrated their greatest joys and mourned their greatest losses. They have confessed their fears and expressed their hopes.

A sacred space also has a special gift for ushering us toward the holy, often by focusing us on our senses rather than our clambering thoughts. A labyrinth, for example, stimulates the right brain to give our logic-driven, overworked left brain a rest. It is the creative centre that enables us to enter into mystery. Candles, incense, icons and art can play similar roles.

Creating sacred space, however, is not just about setting apart a physical location and designing it for entry into prayer. The creation of space also means silence and stillness, room to hear the story of the other, to ask questions, to listen. It means having the freedom to doubt, to be afraid and be honest about wherever we find ourselves on our pilgrimage toward God.

In Christian community, making space means having room to wrestle with the grey areas of faith and being okay to show up with more questions than answers. It means welcoming the gay student who is struggling with his identity, being ok with noisy children during the service, and making room for people to move in and out of the community as they need to, both supporting them and letting them go. As we attempt to create sacred space in the St. John’s chapel for both our Christian brothers and sisters and others, it is my prayer that the physical space would merely be a sign of the many ways in which space is created and welcomed in our community.

Social Media, Friend or Foe: Could the Holy Spirit Really be on Twitter??

I have heard it said that social networking is a symptom of our consumerist, individualistic culture which should be prophetically resisted. Yet after several years of prayer, research, and experimentation, I’ve become convinced of quite the opposite: the Holy Spirit is, in fact, on twitter. As a postmodern in her late twenties who can remember life without the internet, I have watched my peers and my students change the ways they interact with one another. And while opinions on what this means abound, changing methods of communication is quite a normal thing.

While some Christians are afraid that communication changes mean a growing irrelevance for the Church and a narcissism which prevents young adults from seeking community, I would argue that God is up to something here, perhaps calling us to a new way of doing life together. After all, the Holy Spirit has never been one to sit idly by as humanity changes beyond recognition. We worship the God of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, One who is the master creator of culture and at work in all times and places.

On November 2^nd at the Faith and the City conference hosted by St. Augustine’s United Church, I will argue that social media is not only a valuable tool for the Church, but it is a place where God is already at work, drawing people into community and into God’s self. The ecumenical conference will focus on faith and political engagement, so I will look at how Christians might use social networking as a way to live into God’s call to pursue justice and mercy in the city. Other panelists include Jane Barter-Moulaison, Tim Sale, Aiden Enns, Lynda Trono, Bill Blaikie, and others. For more information about the event check out the blog: http://faithinthecityaugustine.blogspot.ca. To
register, please contact Augustine United Church at augustine.uc@mymts.net or (204) 284-2250.

When We're Faced with Suicide

World Suicide Prevention Day

Tomorrow is World Suicide Prevention Day and I find myself thinking of all the theological misconceptions around suicide. The questions people have when a loved one takes his or her own life are particularly difficult, in part because suicide is such a bizarre event that it makes us question much of what we thought to be true. I say it’s bizarre because creation is made to live and to desire life; the very fact that a person no longer desires what he or she has been created for is an unusual twist in the created order.

Nonetheless, I think it’s fair to say that virtually all of us has been affected by suicide in some way; I can’t even count the number of people I know of who have suicided, known either to me or to people I love. I use the verb “suicided” rather than “committed suicide” because it’s time we stopped putting suicide in the same category as a crime (such as, “he committed a felony”). Usually when someone “commits” something it is utterly shameful, a taboo subject in the community.

In years past, the Church has made the grave mistake of treating suicide as one such taboo subject. These deaths were explained away and condemned, the families of the deceased shamed and outcast. A person who died this was buried outside the churchyard as a symbol that he or she would not rise with the Christians on the day of resurrection and would be condemned to eternal punishment.

Fortunately, the Church now has the opportunity to acknowledge our error and take an active role in suicide prevention and care, as we have with other ancestral baggage. A suicidal person is in utterly unbearable pain, such as most of us could never imagine. Jesus calls such hurting people, saying “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:18). As the Creator-God, it is always God’s desire that God’s children choose life, promising to carry us through the darkest and most painful moments of our lives. Yet when a child dies, God is also there to catch him, to gather him into God’s arms and keep him safe there forever.

As those who are left behind to wonder and to grieve, I believe the most important thing we can do is to talk openly about suicide, as scary and painful as it can be. When a friend or family member is struggling, don’t be afraid to ask about it. Encourage her to seek help in whatever way you can, reminding her that she will come out the other side of the darkness she’s experiencing. Tell her she never needs to walk alone- and then tell her again.

Tomorrow I will wear a yellow ribbon to honour the too-short lives of those I have known and those I have not. But I also wear the ribbon as a symbol of light in dark places, a reminder that it’s ok to talk about suicide and to ask for help. Finally, I wear the ribbon as a reminder to myself that sometimes the people around me are walking in dark and lonely places. Perhaps if we can walk together, the road will be a little smoother and the burden a little lighter. Perhaps together we can come out the other side of that darkness.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, click here to contact the Manitoba Suicide Hotline

Welcoming All as Christ

It’s orientation week at the university, when new students are pouring over the sidewalks and across the quad, wearing their favourite outfits and looking either ecstatic or terrified. I imagine that we are a large monastery like the ones in the European Middle Ages, and the professed monks and nuns are all wearing yellow shirts, pointing the eager new novices in the direction of their profession classes. Some are completely sure of their vocation, having mapped out a solid eight year plan, while others are only here as postulants, not sure if university life is really for them.

As I point a young man in the direction of the engineering building, I think about my own vocation in this place. Tonight I’m getting a new tattoo which reads, “Welcome All as Christ,” a line from the Rule of St. Benedict. Although Benedict’s monastic rule seems harsh to modern readers, during the seventh century he was considered unusually kind and sensitive, teaching that every person should be welcomed into the community in the same way that Jesus would be. A striking feature of the Benedictine way of life was the insistence that all members of the community, including the very young, the lower class, and the uneducated, were to be included in group discussion and treated with respect.

When someone asks about my new tattoo, I explain that it means that we should look for God in everyone. That’s something almost anyone can understand. The implications of such an idea are much more difficult to wrap our minds around, however. University life, very often, does not teach us to look for God in everyone. We are taught to compete for grades, for fashion, for friends, and for jobs. This week already I have seen too many young women flaunting their bodies and young men being bullied because someone in their life has been unable to see Jesus in him or her.

Receiving a person as Christ is not simply a matter of “tolerance” or “human rights”; it goes far beyond such legal claims. When I see Jesus in the eyes of another, I welcome him warmly into my home; I sit with her when she’s crying; I go out of my way to treat her like she matters. Because if she matters to God, she matters to me. In St. Benedict's day, the people who were hardest to welcome were obvious: beggars, lepers, foreigners. I see many of these people on campus today too. What does it mean to look for the face of Jesus in them?

The problem, of course, is that despite my best intentions I am particularly bad at keeping Benedict’s rule of welcome. I am liable to see only a broken, sinful person sitting in front of me and not the face of Jesus. So as you and I launch into our respective vocations at the university this year, we do well to remember that it is only Jesus that is really able to see the image of God in everyone. Yet as we apprentice with Jesus this year, we will slowly learn to welcome the way he does. J

 

How to Treat the Freshmen, 1495

 

They get smaller every year.
Codex Manesse (c. 1304)

A little advice for the new school year, reposted from http://askthepast.blogspot.com/2013/08/how-to-treat-freshmen-1495.html

"Statute Forbidding Any One to Annoy or Unduly Injure the Freshmen. Each and every one attached to this university is forbidden to offend with insult, torment, harass, drench with water or urine, throw on or defile with dust or any filth, mock by whistling, cry at them with a terrifying voice, or dare to molest in any way whatsoever physically or severely, any, who are called freshmen, in the market, streets, courts, colleges and living houses, or any place whatsoever, and particularly in the present college, when they have entered in order to matriculate or are leaving after matriculation."

Leipzig University Statute (1495)

A friendly reminder for the new academic year: please resist the temptation to terrify the freshmen with spooky voices, at least for the first few weeks.

Questions and Answers

     This evening I had a conversation I will never forget. I was sitting beside a dear friend, ripe in years and equally ripe in wisdom, who asked about the funeral I officiated three days ago. “I don’t know” I responded quietly, “I just feel like the bible leaves me with more questions than answers.” As I sat there frustrated by the things I don’t understand, I waited quietly for his disappointment. I waited for him to tell me I’d make a terrible priest. Instead, his answer surprised me. “Maybe that’s why I like you” he said, more to himself than to me. “I have a lot of questions about the bible myself. When something terrible happens, there are no easy answers.”

     I couldn’t believe it. This man has been a devoted Christian all his life and holds the respect of many in his community. How could he have questions or, dare I say it, doubt? The answer, I realize, is that my friend has suffered a great deal on this earth. Christian or not, he isn’t naïve enough to pretend to have all the answers. Perhaps learning to follow Christ is more about learning to ask good questions than finding all the answers.

     Preaching at the funeral this week, I felt a little stupid, as if people were looking to me to give completed answers I couldn’t possibly provide. And I wasn’t about to pretend I could; I hate hypocrisy. Instead, I pointed them toward a mystery, something I knew was there though I didn’t understand it. I believe in things like the goodness of God, the coming kingdom, and the resurrection of the dead because I can feel them happening, not because I can explain what’s going on. Sometimes I don’t have a blessed clue.

     Watching for the signs of God’s kingdom is a bit like learning to sense the coming of a storm. When I was a kid growing up on the farm, I learned to sense the change in wind that signaled the need to close the barn right away.  I knew that when the animals began to act a little differently or the sky began to change, it was time to put away my toys and head inside. But to this day, I couldn’t tell you a thing about how the storm works. Or why we shut up the barn some days only the have the storm pass in another direction.

     Life in God is a similar mystery which can only be known by being experienced. Just as I can’t explain what it’s like to be playing in the field and suddenly sense that a storm is on the way, so it is very difficult to explain the mysteries of life and death in words. While I stood over the deceased this week with more questions than answers, however, God showed up. Later I was commended for a well-orchestrated funeral, but all I did was ask questions. I think that’s what they call faith- because faith only dies when we no longer wonder at the mystery, when we stop showing up, and when we stop asking questions.

On Tattoos and Vocation

          I had just turned 20 and I’d been debating between two tattoos for months. Should my first tattoo be the word “justice,” my greatest goal and passion, or should it be God’s sacred Hebrew name? Quite unexpectedly, my tattoo conundrum was forcing me to do some serious thinking about what was most important to me and why. One night as I sat praying in my dorm room I reminded God that the only reason justice was so important to me was that I served a God of justice who called me to reflect that image. My God was the God of the oppressed, a God of action, not of passive religious reflection. “In fact,” I remember thinking to myself, “you really kind of need me. Your pursuit of justice in the world isn’t going very well at the moment.”

What happened next is a moment I will never forget. God did not seem angry or annoyed with me over my youthful arrogance, but just as a mentor might gently answer an over-confident teenager, God asked, “Is it your justice that you’ve committed yourself to, or is it mine?” I was taken aback by the question. Such a possibility had never occurred to me before. Could it be that God’s plan for the world was different from mine? Was my elaborate plan for eradicating poverty in my lifetime not only statistically impossible but also a symptom of prideful distrust in what God was up to? Did I really believe God was enough for the world?

As I continued to ponder these questions, I decided to get both tattoos and experiment with the idea that God might actually be enough. Enough for me, enough for the poor, enough for the world. I asked questions about the implications of the crucifixion for community development and what the resurrection meant for my country’s exorbitant wealth. I started taking seminary classes and debated over what it meant to give God all of my life, including my desire to serve.

The journey that ensued took me to a mission, a slum, a convent, a community house, and finally- to a bishop’s office. From there I learned about “the ordination of baptism,” the idea that in our baptisms we are recruited into God’s service to represent and honour God in a particular way, depending on our gifts and abilities. This is what we call “vocation,” said the bishop, and my particular vocation would combine both my tattoos perfectly: I would finish seminary and become a priest.

The next part of this journey has begun with the deaconate, a kind of service which grounds all others because it includes a solemn vow to “be Jesus” to the least of these: the poor, the sick, the elderly, and the young. A deacon is supposed to portray for others, priests, laity, and even bishops, what being Jesus to the world looks like. As you might guess, I am in no way equipped to take on such a role. Yet I feel greater confidence to jump into this now than I did seven years ago, because I have no incredible plan for changing the world now; I only have Jesus. And that, my friends, is enough.