Housekeeping

Our projects and goals often unfold and develop at a different pace and in different ways than we expected or hoped for. And even if we have a sense that a plan might take some difficulty and slow work, when the difficult and slowness arrives we can’t help but feel a little discouraged.

My week has had moments of a combination between these two sources of slight discouragement. This summer, I knew heading into it, was going to be a time of slowly developing connections and relationships within the Kwantlen community, getting my feet wet on campus and envisioning what concrete projects I could undertake as a chaplain when the Fall semester rolls around. That has only been partially what has happened – in fact, there have been a number of fast paced and high energy days on campus, where meetings with different university departments, connecting with students, and my own reflection about the shape of this chaplaincy make for a full and interesting schedule. Last week, too, was a busy one, planning for, implementing, and following up on a Multi-Faith Information evening, inviting other communities to participate in our Multi-Faith Centre on campus.

This week, though, has moved along much more slowly. The campus has seemed quiet. I’m yearning for an increasing amount of intentional relationships focused around Christian faith and spirituality, but many of my connections with students are one-off, brief conversations. Also, because the Multi-Faith Centre is so new, there is currently a slight lack of cohesive vision and direction for the Centre and its various chaplains, and this is something of a hindrance for implementing or even envisioning some concrete projects I want to undertake as a Christian chaplain.

So while there are lots of good and positive things moving along in my work, there are also opportunities for discouragement and confusion. And it is not necessarily a bad thing to be disappointed. We all have dreams and visions for our careers, families, relationships, and our very lives; sometimes things work out with ease but that is definitely not always the case – we’re also all faced with challenges that can seem to stall or derail what we hoped for.

But while it is not a bad thing in itself to be discouraged, there are different ways forward. 

Discouragement can be an end in itself, swallowing us more thoroughly into its power. While we can’t avoid discouragement entirely, we can choose what we let it do to us. Do we invite it in and allow it to set up camp in our home? Or can we instead invite discouragement in as a sort of housekeeper, as the Islamic poet Rumi suggested (see the poem below)? It comes into our souls, not to stay forever, but to empty us out, to clean us of plans and projects that lie broken on the floor, and then leave an empty, clean, and fresh space where God himself can come in, inhabit us, and work with us again to look forward in hope to new possibilities.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

The Joy of Multi-Faith

What an exciting week for the Kwantlen Multi-Faith Centre! Last Monday evening we hosted an open house and information evening on campus. We are hoping to expand our Multi-Faith Centre to include chaplains of many different traditions and beliefs, and Monday evening was a chance to extend an invitation to a wide and beautiful array of diversity. Buddhist, Muslim, Baha’i, Humanist, and Christian were all represented. The discussion was rich, fruitful, and reflected a desire of different traditions to celebrate both unity-in-diversity and diversity-in-unity.

It’s given me another opportunity to reflect on Multi-Faith explorations from a Christian perspective, this time with the energy of a specific Multi-Faith experience in my mind. I particularly enjoyed a conversation I had with a Muslim Imam (the Muslim equivalent of a pastor), as we asked each other questions about our different religious traditions. I learned about the theological and moral significance of the Islamic month Ramadan, a time of fasting for the sake of closer communion with God, a deeper investment in Muslim faith, and the invitation to share in the experience of the poor and the hungry. It is a rich and beautiful practice that has stretched through centuries of Islam. The Imam was deeply committed to it, describing the tradition of Ramadan with an inspiring combination of humility and confidence.

Across different religious traditions there are certainly differing systems of belief. On one level, Christians and Muslims simply hold different things to be true. However, it is very important to remember that religious traditions are not merely a set of beliefs. They are always encompassed by different practices that form a community. Again, Christians and Muslims have different practices; Christians celebrate the Lord’s Supper and Baptism, Muslims practice rigorous fasting during the season of Ramadan. Some practices, though, are the same: both of these traditions affirm, for example, that caring for the poor is an essential part of the life of faith.

Remembering that religious traditions are far more than just a set of beliefs is already a way past the sort of dilemma that suggests that if you don’t agree on the truth of certain beliefs (such as “Jesus Christ is God’s Word Incarnate”) then the only conversation that can be had is one arguing out who is “right” and who is “wrong”. The things that Christians claim are “true” are only “true” in the context of the practices of Christian community: taking the Lord’s supper, baptizing, reading the scriptures, caring for the poor, etc… Religious truth is not the same thing as scientific truth.

As a Christian, then, even though I may not share the same beliefs or practices of the Muslim tradition, I am not committed to arguing out the truth or falsity of certain religious statements, because I believe that religious truth is something totally different from scientific truth. When Paul writes “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified,” he is not talking about a mind-independent truth, but about the truth of Jesus that affects him to the core of his being, shaping him into the image of Christ, the suffering-servant King. And that is not something that can be argued for or against using rational argumentation. It is far more existential.

That is why the first reaction of a Christian to a different religious tradition is not one of antagonism, but of hospitality and interest. The practices and beliefs of Islam come from a rich and robust history of Islamic theological reflection and practice. If we can trust that the truth of Christ is deeper and more expansive than a set of beliefs, then we can also trust that God encourages us to learn and celebrate the particularity of other religious traditions. I will likely never practice Ramadan. But the practice of “knowing only Christ and him crucified” means patiently and discerningly emptying myself to receive others with hospitality, compassion, and interest. Affirming and celebrating other traditions with their specificities of belief and practice does not mean saying “all religions are the same, deep down”. It means, rather, trusting that God, as triune, does not only manifest himself as pure unity and sameness, but also as delightful difference, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We are not in a position, as Christians or as human beings in general, to make final, definitive truth statements. What we can do is live as the final and definitive truth, that is, as followers of Christ. But that does not make us the judgers of world religions. Instead, it means that we are constantly judged, judged by the scandal of Christ on the cross.

This is a difficult topic, and I don’t pretend to have gotten to the bottom of it. But for now, I celebrate and am thankful for the presence of God that emerges between Christians and Muslims and between any two people who approach relationship not with fear, antagonism, or control, but with friendship, hospitality, and open-heartedness. Jesus demands nothing less of his followers. 

The Thrill of Christian Faith

This past week of chaplaincy at Kwantlen overflowed with a huge variety of experiences. My Fleetwood CRC chaplaincy committee visited the campus early in the week. Together we explored both the physical and spiritual space of Kwantlen, with its well-designed libraries, classrooms, offices, and cafes, all the while imaging and sharing our sense of the deep spiritual desires and questions that this community of learning is wrestling with. We asked ourselves, how can our Christian chaplaincy make a home and hospitable centre for this piece of God’s creation?

I met some students for the first time who came to the Multi-Faith Centre with a spiritual intensity and questioning mind that led to very fruitful and exciting discussions. I thought long and hard about the importance of the Multi-Faith Centre, about how it can be both inclusive of all perspectives and religious traditions as well as allowing for the distinctiveness of thought and practice that each of those traditions has to offer, whether explicitly religious or secular. I met with Kwantlen representatives to discuss and think about that very issue. I connected with other Christian Reformed campus ministers, sharing stories, ideas, and encouragement. And I even encountered some disagreement this week, a difference of opinion on how the Multi-Faith Centre should function.

Many of these experiences were spiritually intense and charged with an excitable energy. Some of my week was lower key, writing emails and doing online research about Multi-Faith Centres on other university campuses.

But whatever the energy level or emotional impact of these varied experiences, I am increasingly convinced that the Christian life is exciting. Thinking, practicing, and living out the Christian faith is not simply about ordered and proper theological frameworks, church structures, or ethical systems. While all of these things are important, they are only so insofar as they are caught up in the thrill, danger, and excitement of following Jesus.

In his book “Orthodoxy” G.K. Chesterston wrote something that continues to haunt me: “There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy.” Orthodoxy he is talking about, the rich, thick tradition of Christian faith. Not the thrill of heresy or being supposedly ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ and rejecting Christian institutions or traditional doctrines, as if Christian tradition were dull, uninspiring, and in need of science or secularism to jolt it out of its slumber. Instead, Christianity carries within itself the seeds of its own destabilization and unsettlement.

It is Jesus who jolts both the church and the world out of its passive slumber. Jesus calls us to the excitement of love, justice, joy, and creativity. And not only that, but the Christian tradition is deeply invested with working out who Jesus is and what it means to follow him. We are caught right in the middle, not of bland doctrines, but of exciting tensions that lie at the heart of the Christian faith: Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, the Kingdom of God is both now and not yet, the Church both receives the love of Christ and gives the love of Christ. And Jesus himself formulated one of the most paradoxical and exciting teachings of all: “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it” (Matthew 16:25).

Through this past week I have been struck by how this thrill of Christian life can make its way into both the menial and more inspiring tasks and experiences. Every moment of following Jesus is centered around living in the exciting and fruitful tensions of power in weakness, of giving to receive, of divinity and humanity. As his followers we are at the heart of this orthodoxy. Of course, we often fail to live out of this energy; the tasks of the world drain our energy or we are tempted to close down the thrill for the sake of safety and security. But if we continue to try to follow Jesus and be inhabited by his spirit of life, then the excitement, peril, and joy of Christian faith will always be as close as our very selves. 

God in Every Person

The way I spend my time at Kwantlen has taken a slight shift these past few weeks. I am transitioning out of office set-up and generally getting settled. Instead, I have been increasingly involved in what I came to Kwantlen to do: develop relationships and be involved in human interaction. These interactions are many and varied: some meetings, some passing conversations, some in depth discussions. And people of different religious backgrounds, ethnicity, and personalities all add to the variety.

If we think about it, even the frequent conversations we have with people we see often are never the same. Each day, each interaction offers something new and different, the chance to see a person in a new light, whether it's a new acquaintance or an old friend. It feels as though human persons have an infinite depth to them that cannot be full explored, either after one hour of conversation or a life-time of relationship.

What is it about humans that makes them so rich, interesting, and wonderful? I think it is God himself. Every person is a unique place where God can be received and given. That is why individual people are so valuable, because they offer us something that can't be found anywhere else: the presence of God expressed and experienced in a special way.

And this isn't meant to be a grand pronouncement about making every interaction we have with each person into some sort of extreme religious experience. Instead, it's about noticing that God is present in ordinary people doing ordinary things. Of course, some people we meet might not fit our standard of 'ordinary'. Or sometimes people might be hard to agree with, difficult to get along with. But none of that prevents them from being a place where God is at work. That is why Jesus ate with both "sinners" and the "teachers of the law"; no one was cornered off from being in a unique relationship with God.

One of the challenges of following Jesus is looking for and celebrating the different people we meet, in all of their particularities or mannerisms: race, religion, personality, or anything else does not prevent them from expressing that relationship with God. It is not our task to judge who has the Holy Spirit and who does not; instead it is our task to look for and rejoice in how God's love is everywhere, in all creation, and in every person.

This also means being OK with celebrating our own unique way of encountering God and sharing God's love with the world. Oscar Wilde said "Be yourself. Everyone else is taken". And if we really are ourselves I think that we are also attentive to helping other people be themselves. You and I and everyone else are on a journey of becoming who we are called to be by God. And this journey is not one that is in isolation. We become our true selves in God when we follow Jesus and try to help others find themselves in God's extravagant love.

God is encountered in each other. And so as I keep meeting new people and strengthening the relationships that have already begun, I hope that I can celebrate God at work in my life and through that celebration to help other's encounter God in their own lives. It doesn't have to be an extravagant thing: just a careful attentiveness to how every person in every moment is beloved by God and capable of becoming who they are called to be in that love.