A Sacramental Moment

Everything is a little quiet around the Kwantlen Multifaith office this afternoon. My day has been spent answering emails, meeting with a student, doing a bit of reading, and still attempting to get some of the logistics of a new office figured out. This afternoon, though, as the tasks of the day draw to a close, I am confronted with the task of slowing down as the silence of empty afternoon halls creeps in around me. While still glancing through my inbox, I am suddenly pulled away from the noise of technology, of the bustle of both my inner and outer world.

I'm still quite new in this position. Regular programming hasn't started yet, I don't have lots of emails to follow up on, and yet its been too easy to fill my mind with a sort of frantic pace.

It's important to remember, now and always, that time is a gift. This summer especially, as my first season in this chaplaincy position, it is important to savor the slightly slower pace that has been granted to me instead of allowing my soul to be caught up in external activity.

We need to treasure and make use of the slower times in our lives, partially to prepare for the busyness of the future (and the Fall season of a university is always busy), but also to enjoy them for their own sake. In the slower moments of a day, a week, or a month we are being granted an opportunity to recall things that busyness does not allow for: we are invited into thanksgiving, into prayer, perhaps even into a chance to work on ourselves, challenging ourselves to reflect on those areas of our lives which require us to trust God and trust others. The Church calendar and liturgy works these moments in naturally, with a season like advent reminding us to wait, and the practice of the Lord's Supper recalling us to our shared humanity with the common loaf and cup.

But life itself can sometimes offer such liturgical or sacramental moments. Let's allow ourselves to be drawn into them from time to time.

Faithful in Multifaith

There can be no doubt regarding the plurality of religious and secular worldviews and practices in Canada. The situation at Kwantlen Polytechnic University is no different. This university serves as something of a microcosm, if not for all of Canada then certainly for south-western British Columbia; there are many significant and visible cultural, ethnic, and religious groups on campus. In fact, I don’t think identifying a majority is even possible. We are all “visible minorities,” as far as I can tell.

It is in response to such a cultural milieu that a Multifaith Centre such as the one here at Kwantlen is established and becomes a locus of important dialogue, conversation, and practice. What, though, precisely is a “Multifaith Centre”? And how might a Christian community participate in such an initiative?

In a country like Canada, in a city like Surrey, in a university like Kwantlen, globalization is a palpable reality. However, what evidently does not take place in this process of cultural and ethnic diffusion is the reduction of all differences into the same.  There is no neutral archetype of a human person or human community which everyone in the world slowly slips towards thanks to globalization. This is not to say that there are not attempts to erase difference (consider the travesty and tragedy of residential schools or the more benign and bland attempts of certain spiritual traditions to make everyone is the same by suggesting that "deep down" there are no differences). However, religious commitment and cultural tradition are not easily or simply eliminated.

A Multifaith Centre affirms and celebrates these differences. Different traditions, cultures, and religions can come to this centre and find a place to explicitly explore their own tradition, delve deeply into it, but always in the context of others who are doing the same with their own traditions. The aim is not to find the basic commonality of all these varied traditions and abandon the supposedly superfluous aspects of distinctive doctrine, practice, or lifestyle.

How, then, might a Christian community engage this sort of centre? I would suggest that it is by being thoroughly attentive to our own tradition. And what does the Christian tradition consist of? Of course, within Christianity we have to acknowledge a vast array of differences. However, speaking about Christianity within a Multifaith context, I would appeal to four central aspects of Christian practice identified by Rowan Williams: baptism, bible, Eucharist, and prayer. These are not things we check at the door of the Multifaith Centre, but we bring them in with us, exploring and imagining what they mean when they are put alongside the practices and traditions of other faiths and religions.

Of course some commonalities will arise. Celebrating difference does not mean ignoring or neglecting what can truly be shared. But such commonality is not authentic if it is imposed from the outset, if certain faith communities are told to abandon their practices and come with only their doctrine or intellectual tradition to a falsely ‘neutral’ and ‘rational’ interfaith dialogue on the intellectual aspect of a tradition alone. No tradition is devoid of practices, and so to be authentically Multifaith must include all the various practices of a tradition.

Christian witness is not about converting non-Christians to our pattern of belief and practice. Of course we are not entirely devoid of reasons for holding onto our Christian tradition, but Christian witness is not convincing everyone that they are “wrong” compared to to our “right” beliefs. Rather, it means faithfully attending to Christian practices of baptism, scripture reading, the Lord’s Supper, and prayer, practices that Christians for centuries have affirmed open us to the presence of the Trinity at work in all creation, in all people, regardless of their cultural, religious, or intellectual background. And if we are able to be attentive to the work of the triune God in all things then I suspect we will soon be echoing Jesus’ words in Matthew 8.10: “Truly I tell you, not even in Israel (read: Church, Christianity) have I found such faith”. 

The Christian as Perpetual Beginner

Edmund Husserl once wrote that "the philosopher is the perpetual beginner". I would willingly and easily substitute "Christian" for "philosopher" in this phrase; if our life in God is an journey into the infinite, then every day, every moment can be seen as a new beginning, a fresh starting point, an inaugural event that leads us into an adventure, a task, or a resting place that we have not foreseen. The resurrection took the world by surprise, offering a beginning where there seemed to be only a dead end. Ought the resurrection not still take us by surprise, not as a cold, disinterested fact but as a truth that gets under our skin, into our hearts, and invigorates us to pursue life, and life to the full, even, dare we proclaim, life that extends beyond and ruptures from within dead-ends, disappointments, and death?

These past few weeks at Kwantlen have been an explicit beginning, something that anyone would recognize as a beginning, so my imagination hasn't yet needed to infuse life into a dead situation (instead, it's more been engaged in imagining how to set up the furniture in the Multifaith Office). There is mostly possibility and excitement before me since the tradition of CRC campus ministry at Kwantlen simply hasn't had the time to stabilize and atrophy into an static institution in need of a prophetic summons. Right now, rather, there is a simple and obvious situation of what Christians are always being confronted with: a fresh moment, a new opportunity to discover God within oneself and within the world.

This morning I encountered the joy and excitement of new life in Christ over breakfast and coffee with a Christian member of the Kwantlen community. Conversation, stories, and ideas were shared as together we imagined what direction the future of a Christian presence at Kwantlen might take. Not only, though, was it the beginning of an important conversation about the role of campus ministry, it also already was campus ministry: two Christians establishing a relationship, a friendship, hopeful and trusting that God is always-already present in each-other. I think we ought not underestimate what life God will bring through the humble beginnings of a friendship that situates itself within the reality of Christ and his kingdom of love.

Right now, then, beginnings are exciting and inspiring. No doubt the task of a perpetual beginner can and will grow wearisome, difficult, and manifestly uninspiring. But for now, a certain positive energy remains, not overflowing itself with an unrestrained passion, but a gentle hum beneath the surface of the menial tasks of setting up an office, scheduling meetings, and sending introductory emails. The Son is always being born in our midst, in our world, in ourselves - by the power of the Holy Spirit may we always find ways to be attentive to that infinite gift from the Father.

Good Beginnings

As I write these words I am sitting in the newly established office for the Multifaith Centre at the Surrey campus for Kwantlen Polytechnic University; it’s my first time sitting in here as the Christian Reformed Chaplain. I’m up on the third floor of the “Fir” building (many of the buildings here are named after trees). The window looks out into a forest of spring-green leaves; the nearest tree is only yards away and reflects green light right into the office. Inside, is less lively: grey and black furniture on a grey and black carpet that is in need of a good vacuum. Some work will need to be done over the next few weeks to make this a warm and hospitable space.

This office will be my home base on the Surrey Campus of Kwantlen as I begin my position of Christian Reformed Campus Chaplain. The campus is fairly quiet now as many students have abandoned classes for a summer of work experience or vacation and the professors take advantage of fewer on campus responsibilities to work at home or travel to conferences. A few offices open onto the work of mathematicians or biologists, but for the most part the halls are lined with closed and locked doors on a Wednesday afternoon at the outset of the summer semester.

I’m standing on the edge of a new job/adventure that I can predict little about. I’ve been heavily involved as a student in two campus ministries, one at a small Christian university (The King’s University) and the other at a large public institution (University of Toronto), and they each offered both unique gifts and challenges. Kwantlen is sufficiently different from both of those contexts, and just as campus ministry was an exciting and varied experience with them, so too will it be equally if not more so here. The inclusion of a Multifaith centre is something entirely new for Kwantlen’s Surrey campus and so the task of a CRC campus chaplain here is mine to both create and discover.

What is my task here? Why establish an office and pay a salary to a Christian Reformed chaplain? One of the phrases which has come up often in conversations around this question is “a Christian presence on campus”. That is my task: to be a positive Christian presence on this campus. But what is a “Christian presence”?

2000 years ago Jesus of Nazareth walked around Galilee and Jerusalem preaching wisdom, performing miracles, challenging human self-sufficiency, and manifesting the love and grace of God. The events surrounding his death and resurrection were so energizing and generative that within a very short time the name of Jesus was increasingly tied to such strong titles as “messiah” (“Christ”), “savior”, “son of God”; eventually the language extended so far as to say that “in him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,” and ultimately relating him to the very act of creation: “In the beginning was the Word…”. This language surrounding Jesus, though, most certainly did not emerge in a vacuum or intellectual ivory tower, but was always correlative to the development of a community which dedicated itself to the fostering of this language, not only in conceptual formulations, but also in word, deed, and presence in the world.

Fast forward 2000 years, through councils, creeds, crusades, martyrdoms, persecutions, and empires and we arrive at one place among many where the Christian tradition has branched: a third floor office at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. The language and practices of the tradition are still with us: the reading of scripture, the pursuit of justice, the sharing of bread and wine, the opening of ourselves to God in prayer. This tradition now finds a new home and a new context at Kwantlen. The open questions before us are now: how is Christ known here? What does the gospel mean now? Where is God at work in the World, in Surrey, at Kwantlen?

This is the task of a Christian chaplain: to ask these questions and to never stop attempting to answer them with both word and deed. Our very lives both are the gift of God and a response to the gift of God. It is the gift, if you will, that keeps on giving. A new centre, a new focal point for this giving has now been opened here at Kwantlen. Kwantlen itself is now the gift to be received and the task to be accomplished. God in Christ is always already working here, God has already elected, called, chosen Kwantlen for something. For what? This is a task of discernment for me as a chaplain and for each Christian and, indeed, for each person who crosses the threshold of this centre for learning and growing. However, though this task of discerning God’s call may be fluid, dynamic, and as of yet unspecified, it is specified insofar as it is never separated from the establishment of God’s kingdom of love and justice made perfectly known 2000 years ago. The perfection of the knowledge of God in Jesus is not a finished task; it is one which is always-already only beginning in every moment of our lives. Regarding beginnings, though, it is surely and explicitly a beginning here at Kwantlen where the joys and challenges of chaplaincy still lie in a book closed before me, but waiting to be explored, enjoyed, savoured, and encountered. I’m only now turning the first page.