Exams, Trouble, and the Mystery of Advent

Exam season has already begun here at KPU as we make our way through Advent. Walking down the now quiet halls of the university, free from the busyness of regular classes, I glance through classroom doors at rooms full of students hunched over the set of questions or problems their professor has prepared for them. Exams are not enjoyable. The stress of cramming an enormous amount of information into your head coupled with the uncertainty of what is actually going to be on the exam does not make for a peaceful transition into the Advent and then Christmas seasons.

I’ve been a student my whole conscious life. For the past eight years I have been either in university or grad school, and every December brings the same mix of excitement and dread. I love Advent, it’s my favorite season of the Church year. The haunting Advent hymns of waiting and longing, both for the mystery of the Incarnation of God in Jesus of Nazareth and for the second coming, where all things will be brought to completion in Christ, inspire in me a curious mix of giddiness and peace. There is nothing quite like plugging in some indoor Christmas lights on a chilly December evening and listening to Loreena McKennitt’s “Snow” in that gentle, dull light. Utter peace in midst of the thrilling adventure of waiting for God.

But, alas, I so rarely get to enjoy that experience without the throb of anxiety in my chest over the sheer volume of school work that accompanies the end of the semester. It’s simply the burden of the pattern and timing of our education system, aligned to place on students the most burdens when the church calendar calls for the most quiet reflection.

However, there are of course moments in every day, in every hour, where the mystery of God among us calls us out of our frantic pace, whether we are a student or not. It seems like a luxury to even have the opportunity to reflect on this mystery when so many people both around the world and locally are struggling to make sense of their own lives, or maybe have even given up on that task all together. (Just this afternoon I was listening to Bob Marley, that quintessential summer musician, who spells it out plainly in a chorus: “so much trouble in the world”).

But, in fact, it is in the midst of that trouble that the mystery of the incarnation calls us to contemplate and reflect. In a world held captive by sin and suffering, whether for the university student or for the countless other troubles that burden humanity, God has mysteriously, beautifully, come to us proclaiming salvation.

So peace and rest in the Advent season might initially seem like a misuse of time in exam season. Or it might seems like a luxury we should forgo when so much suffering in the world calls for action (or at least guilt), not contemplation. But contemplation is an action, a “non-act act,” by which we connect ourselves with the source and fountain of all true love and hospitality: the transcendent, immanent, beautiful, and mysterious triune God. There is deep trouble in the world; but deeper still is infinite beauty. 

It's been too long!

My last post was July 19^th, 2016, which makes my absence in the blogosphere over three months! I won’t offer much by way of excuse. Hopefully those who are interested in the KPU Chaplaincy have found other ways of keeping up with what I’ve been experiencing and exploring.

The semester had a good beginning. Familiar faces have been showing up to the regular Thursday night community meals and though attendance has been sporadic at times, there has more often than not been a small group of friends gathering to share a meal, conversation, reflection on scripture, and just time to hang out. Ordered pizza has been the fare of choice; well, mostly my choice as Thursdays have become slightly busier days for me, transiting from Latin at UBC out to KPU for the afternoon/evening. Doesn’t leave me much time to throw together a pot of soup!

(Though, for those Fleetwood CRC readers of my blog, I’m hoping to have congregation participation in making soup and passing it on for our regular meals. If that sounds interesting to you, please keep in touch! Frozen soup, I expect, would be most convenient. We’ll talk.)

I’ve also been privileged to reconnect with students from last year and get to know a number of new faces. Students from lots of different Christian traditions and viewpoints, all with something unique to offer KPU and to offer our little Christian community here. And so, as usual, much of my time is wonderfully spent over coffee with students (as well as staff and faculty) hearing about their studies, work, and life in general.

My first attempt at hosting a film series film was something of a failure; Friday nights, I now know, are not a good night for hosting events on campus. But, I am committed to it through the end of the semester, so we will see how the following two attempts go (the series is scheduled for the last Friday of each month: September, October, and November). The next film is “Noah,” a rather creative interpretation of the famous Biblical story. I simply hope it will draw people in and stimulate good discussion.

And this coming Sunday I am hosting an event on evangelism and KPU at Fleetwood CRC. What is evangelism? And how should it look on the KPU campus? My hunch is that there is more to evangelism than merely getting people to understand and accept Christian doctrine (though that is very likely an important part of it). So I am hopeful that the evening will be a time for spiritual and theological reflection as well as a chance to share about what's going on at KPU. 

Recent Activities and Future Passivities

So what's been going on at the KPU Chaplaincy lately? Well, this summer we have begun weekly meetings with the on campus Christian Club, Kwantlen Christian Fellowship (KCF). We share a pot of soup and some bread, have a conversation, doing some dishes, and play games. It's been a fruitful time of getting to know one another and also exploring topics of Christian faith and practice.

The conversations have mostly been focussing on Christian practices: spiritual disciplines, prayer, and Christian community, especially. For two weeks we talked about the practice of living and working in community. The main theme that I took away from those conversations (also having learned this from Rowan Williams and the Desert Fathers) is that there simply is no such thing as life with God that excludes life with others. Though it is tempting to exclude such messy and uncomfortable matters as concrete people with disagreements, differences of opinion, and difficult personalities, there really is no other option: Christian life invites us to see our relationship with God and our relationship with our neighbours as mutually intertwined, not having one without the other.

That has been a helpful thing to keep in mind as we continue to work towards a fruitful and vibrant Christian community on campus. KPU has drawn together students from all different walks of life, and my hope is that KCF can be a place where we genuinely explore differences in personality, theology, and opinion while also remaining united in the common goal of following Jesus, understanding who he is, and how we can faithfully live a Christian calling on campus. It is not a simple or easy task. But these regular meetings with about 5 or 6 people have begun what I trust is a community in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Aside from these Christian club meetings, I have also continued to host a philosophy club which focusses broadly on philosophy of religion and cultural criticism. The discussions have been fruitful and sometimes very long. My main aim is to present a coherent critique of materialism and secularism. Since the rest of the participants in the club hold to those two positions with varying degrees of enthusiasm, the disagreements quickly arise! But they are generally quite hospitable and interesting disagreements, never degenerating into poor quality of conversation.

Finally, I have also been meeting with a Muslim student, fostering interreligious dialogue while reading through Miroslav Volf's book Allah: A Christian Response. This young man I'm meeting with is very knowledgeable about his own Muslim faith and heritage and so the discussions have been meaningful and interesting.

Pretty soon the summer semester will be winding to a close and the campus will empty out for a good chunk of August before classes resume in September. In August I'll be taking a three day spiritual retreat, which I am very much looking forward to. Working on establishing a Christian community is exciting but its important for the sake of that community that we take time in solitude. Heni Nouwen says that in solitude we come in contact with that which originally brought and sustains us in community at all. For community is not merely built on outward practices: "Solitude," he writes, "puts us in touch with a unity that precedes all unifying activities. In solitude we become aware that we were together before we came together and that life is not a creation of our will but rather an obedient response to the reality of our being united" (Clowning in Rome, 14).

Waterloo

A few weeks ago I was privileged to attend the annual gathering of the Christian Reformed Campus Ministry Association (CRCMA). Chaplains from all over Canada and the United States gathered in Waterloo, Ontario to worship, talk, pray, and share fellowship together.

The theme of the week was self-care. Among campus ministers there is a tendency to over-extend in time and emotional commitment which can lead to “compassion-fatigue,” where there is more energy going outwards than coming inwards. It’s a recipe for burn out. The CRCMA wanted to address this issue head on.

So several sessions and discussions were focused around this theme and its different components: time management, the recognition of personal boundaries, the importance of friendships and other life given relationships, and other things.

I have not been working as a Campus Minister for as long as most of the chaplains at our gathering, and so maybe I haven’t had the “chance” to experience the long-term fatigue of over-extension. But even having only been working for one year on a half-time basis, I could resonate and understand the importance of self-care: it is important in-and-of-itself as well as to ensure that the energy and attention we give to our campus ministries is as fully supported and well directed as possible.

However, regardless of the importance of the theme, I think what most excited me about the week together was the sense of comradery. I've met with a few other CRC chaplains over this past year, but to gather with 30 others who are spread out across secular campus through North America was an inspiring thing that made me feel like I was part of something, a small, local, focused, but important movement that seeks to enjoy and discover how God is at work through the Holy Spirit in these universities where he is not directly affirmed. Christian students might have questions, fears, doubts, uncertainties, and the CRCMA’s devotion to thinking through these questions with authenticity and rigor is an exciting thing to affirm and be a part of.

So now I've returned to KPU Surrey with a new sense of energy and life (though hours of biking in hot weather this weekend is leaving me a bit sleepy this afternoon). In the small ways I can connect with students around issues of faith, I am participating not only in the project of the CRCMA, but, I trust, in the activity of the Holy Spirit, brooding over the waters of creation, always seeking to make things new, at KPU, in Surrey, and beyond. 

The Reality of God

I have been utterly convinced by David Bentley Hart's book The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (as anyone who has talked to me in the last little while likely knows). I've now read it three times. Hart's aim is to define the word "God" with the hope that it can help clarify both for theists and atheists what it is that they claim to believe or not believe in.

This book has become my main way into conversations with atheists at Kwantlen. Part of what makes it so effective for this task, I think, is that it is simply intellectually rigorous on a philosophical level. The aim is not to prove the scientific truth of the Bible (or any other religious text) but to talk philosophically rather than historically or scientifically. The result is that conversations with atheists can reach a higher level of sophistication and importance. The meaning of the word "God," Hart suggests, accounts for three essential and pervasive topics that pure materialist atheism has a very hard time dealing with: Being ("Why is the something rather than nothing?"), Consciousness ("How is it that I can perceive and know anything?"), and Bliss ("Why do we seek and enjoy the good, the true, and the beautiful?")

Interestingly, Hart's argument draws on numerous philosophical and religious traditions: it is not confined just to Christianity (though Christian thinkers are certainly not excluded, either). In Greek philosophy, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Christianity, Hart finds resources to define the word "God." God is not a being among other beings, and so cannot, in principle, be an object of science. God is not a being, but is rather Being itself, the source and ground of all that it. God is not merely "good" but God is goodness itself. Based on the subtitle of the book, we might define the word "God" as: infinite Being, infinite Consciousness, infinite Bliss.

What is wonderful about my conversations with atheists around campus is how this discussion opens onto my own particular faith, too. How God, the source of all that is, has become fully human, has come to dwell among his creatures and effect our salvation. Of course, questions about the Bible quickly arise, too: how can a God this abstract make himself known in the particular way that he is presented in the Christian scriptures? That is a question I will need to keep wrestling with. But I am completely convinced that nothing in this definition of "God" prevents God from personally communing with human beings in the way described in the Bible.

In fact, I think this definition of the word "God" is the only one that makes any philosophical sense. For if God were simply the greatest being among all beings, rather than the ground and source of all being itself, then the question could be legitimately asked "Who made God? What is the ground of God's being?" But if God is the ultimate, infinite, un-caused, and unconditioned source of all being, all consciousness, and all bliss, then such a question is unintelligible. This, truly, is the God who has come to us in Christ.

Mandatory Courses in Indigenous Studies?

Reading Kwantlen’s student paper The Runner today, I came across an interesting debate regarding the possibility of mandatory courses in indigenous studies. The Runner often has this feature: two columnists each have a short piece about a particular issue from a different perspective.

The writer in favour of adding mandatory indigenous studies courses suggested that it is a continuing form of oppression to exclude the history of indigenous peoples. Too long, he says, has the “settler” narrative of European immigrants dominated our approach to Canadian history, neglecting the culture and subsequent oppression of those indigenous communities who inhabited the land hundreds of years before the Europeans arrived. The university is a perfect place to explore this alternative and rather dark side of Canadian history. Recognizing the supreme importance of this story is an important step of reconciliation that moves past mere apology to concrete action.

On the other hand, the columnist against such mandatory courses basically wants to protect the freedom of the student to focus on what interests them and is important for their degree and/or career. He complains about the fact that Kwantlen has mandatory courses that are already frustrating enough, like arts students needing to take a hard science course that doesn’t really fall within the field of “philosophy” or “English” or other arts programs. By all means, he says, we should have courses on indigenous studies available, but it is a step too far to make them mandatory. “Let the people who are interested in that learn about it,” he writes. “Just don’t force it on the rest of us who are doing something else with our lives”.

What is a Christian response this debate? I won’t go so far as to try and provide a “middle way,” since I am far more sympathetic to the first position than the second. However, Christians probably should take a discerning third way that provides a strong foundation for the first position in God’s love for creation and for humanity. Two points can be made.

First of all, there is something to be said for following ones passions in study, as our second columnist points out. God has given individual people unique passions, gifts, and resources, and those passions need to be freed from too much constraint so that individuals can flourish in their God-given calling. However, Christianity does not allow those gifts to operate outside of community. The Christian community is also concerned with directing and shaping our love, desire, and energy towards God, people, and creation. Christians should have a hard time saying to each other “I’m doing something else with my life,” since our lives are not our own but belong to God’s kingdom of reconciliation and justice. This is not to say that the Christian community should absolutely dictate what an individual does with their life, but just to caution against an individualism that ignores all context of community and history. While we celebrate individuality, that celebration also means giving oneself to interest in and love of others. This might mean offering ourselves to learning about a subject that isn't really in our area of interest. In fact, through love, perhaps we do make it our interest. My individuality with all its gifts and uniqueness is tied up in celebrating that same individuality in others. 

Which leads me to claim that, secondly, as Christians we ought to honor and celebrate the specificity of our place, our history. Christians in Canada live on land marked by a history of indigenous peoples. In order to own that history and the painful role that the church played in oppression we need to listen and pay attention to the past. God’s revelation in Jesus of Nazareth reveals a God concerned with specificity, with concrete place and location, with particular people and their particular stories. The incarnational task of the church is to enter into its own particular time and place informed and shaped by the way Jesus inhabited his time and place.

Now, is it the government’s job to make this encounter with indigenous history and culture’s mandatory? Is it up to the university (perhaps apt given that Kwantlen is named after a local indigenous nation)? I would probably support such moves since I think this history is very important for understanding the roots of our Canadian society and for enacting Christian reconciliation. But, in a society that has abandoned belief in the God of love, I would say that the second columnist is probably right: without God, it may be that this kind of individualism is all that is left. The Christian church needs to own and explore this history itself, not depend on other people or political structures to encourage it. Make use of those structures for the purposes of the kingdom, certainly. But don’t make the mistake of abdicating responsibility. Through Christ we have been given the gift/task of bringing reconciliation and shalom when and where we can. Whether or not others are interested in understanding the history and struggles of indigenous peoples, Christians as individuals and communities are called by the Spirit to understand how God’s reconciliation to the world in Christ can be enacted here and now. And for Christians in Canada, indigenous history and culture is crucial to that task.

The Spirituality of Learning

Today I am beginning a book discussion group on Neal Plantinga’s Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living. Pretty much every student who goes through Calvin College (the CRC’s denominational school) reads this book as part of their first year of studies. A place like Kwantlen University, though, doesn't have any interest as an institution in thinking about the integration of faith and learning, so a small group of us here on campus have taken it on ourselves to think through these issues. How are education and learning, especially at a secular school like KPU, part of our Christian faith and our walk with God? In the introduction to the book Plantinga writes the following:

Thoughtful Christians know that if we obey the Bible’s great commandment to love God with our whole mind, as well as with everything else, then we will study the splendour of God’s creation in the hope of grasping part of the ingenuity and grace that form it. One way to love God is to know and love God’s work. Learning is therefore a spiritual calling: properly done, it attaches us to God. (xi)

What a simple and yet massively expansive vision! Part of the task of a Christian chaplaincy on a non-Christian campus is to open up this vision that brings together learning and the Christian faith in an intimate way. Chemistry, computer science, psychology, business, philosophy, or any number of other university disciplines can all be brought under the lordship of Christ. It is God's good world, given to us to explore and to know. Coming to know and love God's creation is part and parcel of coming to know and love God himself. 

But at a place like KPU that connection can be hard to make. Isn't university for getting a job and taking care of practical things in life? Christian faith is just for church, right? That is exactly the position that Plantinga and the best of the Christian tradition want to challenge. The Christian faith is all about the “practical things in life”. God in Christ has made a truly cosmic claim of lordship. And Christians, in both Christian and non-Christian educational settings, need to be attentive and open to how the Holy Spirit is making that Lordship known in the midst of a broken world.

So I’m looking forward to the discussion and the possibilities of how our Christian faith and practice can be made known on this campus! There is truly not one square inch, as Abraham Kuyper put it, over which Christ our Lord does not say “that is mine”. And a book group at Kwantlen is one small but important way to bear witness to that very truth. 

Elevator

I was able to talk with a lot of people today. Some were friends I had made last semester here at Kwantlen, while others were completely new. In fact, just as I was cleaning up from a Multi-Faith event I ran into a young man in the elevator who asked me about the Multi-Faith Centre (the name was on a sign I was holding). It turns out he is a Christian student deeply interested in the Christian spiritual life and Christian presence on the KPU campus. A spiritual friendship has begun.

And so, with some consistent relationships and some that seem to appear out of thin air, my work at Kwantlen presses on. I really felt like my chance encounter in the elevator was the work of the Holy Spirit, and I do believe it was, but as I reflect I notice that even those relatively stable friendships I have developed are also the work of the Spirit. It is surely exciting and invigorating to be confronted with a spiritual gift like a friendship in an elevator. But, as always, God reminds us that deep continuities are just as important and just as much his work as surprising eruptions in the midst of our lives.

So my prayer today is that I would continue to be attentive to both of these dimensions and see their ultimate unity: the unity of the work of the Spirit in both surprising and comfortable ways. 

Patience with Lawns and Posters

I’ve been doing lots of planning this week. There are plenty of new projects on the horizon: philosophy of religion discussion group, an on-campus Christian club, an open mic event, the Multi-Faith Centre festival in February, and a short talk at the CRC young adult retreat later this month. It’s all interesting and exciting stuff to plan for.

Since I began my “working” life as a maintenance landscaper I’ve come to realize that projects take time. As a chaplain at KPU I find myself frustrated every now and then that I have to spend so much time emailing, planning, and thinking through the little details that go into events or meetings. And I remember a similar frustration when I was landscaping: it takes that long to mow that lawn?

But, I have now come at least to the realization (though not to the consistent experience) that it’s OK that things take time. Putting together a little ad for my philosophy of religion discussion group takes some effort. What text should I put on the poster? What images would be good? While impatience thinks this should take no more than 10 minutes, both reality and a persevering spirit offer a different approach. Take half an hour. Take a hour, if you need to.

It’s important and helpful to take the time needed to do good quality work. And the scriptures never tell us to “do as much as you can in as little time as possible”. Instead, “whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). And so in trust and with some frustration I’m allowing for the time to prepare and plan for good things, good projects. While I might wish to be deeply engaged in the lives of Kwantlen students at every minute of my time here, a patient heart allows for God to work through carefully mown lawns and thoughtfully designed posters.