A Purchase in Berkeley
A few weeks ago, on my way to the synod
assembly in Sacramento, I pulled out on Highway 80 to stop at my favorite building
salvage store, Urban Ore.
An hour later, and after some texting back and forth with Pr. Ben, I
walked out happily with a prairie-style window and an old mirror (trust me, you
don’t want to know how I ended up fitting both into my little 2-door convertible).
Why? Because of the visual theme of our
worship services for the next two months: “Windows to God Mirrors for the Soul.”
In
some of the lessons during the season we meet people who are looking on to what
is happening around them, as if they were looking through a window at events
taking place. As we listen some of these lessons, it is like we have a “window” to God, a way of helping us
to see something more, and to learn something different about God.
At other times as we explore the passages in
this season, it is as though the passages reflect back to us aspects of what it
is to be human, positive and negative: the lessons act like “mirrors” for the soul.
Some Sundays we will learn more about God,
other Sundays we will focus more on looking at ourselves and how we can reflect
more of God through our lives.
A Bit
of a Parable
To help us
stay on track with our visual focus, I now had a window and a mirror leaning
against the shelves in my office. Some
time has passed since and the two are now on display in the narthex. A few things happened in the meantime.
As you can
imagine, a window which spent weeks, if not months outside on a salvage lot was
not exactly clean. In fact, it was
dusty, grimy, and covered with cobwebs, with price stickers stuck to it.
The process
of getting it ready reminds me a bit of some of what we do to see God. While God comes to us, reveals himself to us,
and shatters our reality with his good news into our lives, it helps that we
clear our vision so that we can see what God does in the world. Thus far, I have the window a good scrub with
water, detergent, and a sponge.
Unfortunately, the glass still is streaked and could benefit from
another cleaning session. Similarly, we
need to clear our vision not just once, but repeatedly, over and over again.
Next
Steps
So what’s
next? Right now, the mirror may need some TLC and a few tacks to hold it
together, but overall, it will serve its purpose in reflecting any potential users’
image back to them. The window, on the
other hand, still needs some work, if it were to serve its purpose for our
worship summer season. Thus far, all one
can see when looking through it is what’s right behind it – in this case the
stone wall against which it is leaning.
But a window into God? Hmmm.
Here’s what
I hope to do with you over the next couple of weeks. I hope that you will share with me (either
via the note paper inserted into your bulletin or by emailing me) where you see
God active in the world and how you have learnt something more, something
different about God that you didn’t know before.
Together
with Liz Barton (who oversees our sanctuary décor) I plan to create collages
from our collective responses that then will fill the individual panes of the
window as testimony to the collective faith of the Bethel community.
