This last Friday, my wife and I made our way to Toronto at the invitation of some dear friends. They invited us to join them in viewing the outdoor installation entitled “Crossings: A Journey to Easter.” (https://www.crossingstoronto.com/) The installation draws upon the practice of praying at the stations of the cross, engaging the theme with contemporary art. Most of the pieces were found on the campus of the University of Toronto, installed on the colleges of the Toronto School of Theology. Another five were found at church sites in Deer Park.
The powerful and moving art was augmented with meaningful theological reflections and inspiring poems accompanying them in a guide. But for me, a rich part of the event was walking from spot to spot in the convivality of friends, especially poignant having met at TST some 25 years ago. I probably haven’t been to the school in over 15 years. The journey had that feeling of knowing where you are at, but then not – being undone by failing to see anticipated sights, or seeing unexpected sites.
The event was made still more poignant in that we made this pilgrimage a few days before Christians celebrate Palm Sunday, with the narrative of Jesus’s journey into Jerusalem. Setting this story along side of the stations of the cross, developed historically as a local alternative to pilgrimages to the locations of the events in Jerusalem, invites us to think of the power of movement with spiritual intentions. Walking serves as a metaphor for the spiritual journey which is a travel within at the same time as a journey without. In a way we were richly blessed by the strange weather of that day, which shifted from sun to mist to rain and the odd blast of sleet. The weather was changing in a changed location that was familiar and strange at the same time. The theme of change loomed large.
This theme of change was especially potent against the backdrop of this place where I dug deeper into theology in graduate studies – developing expertise in areas that have been both further developed and left behind. As I imagine my 25-year younger self wandering around that campus along my now 60 year old me, I see how we are both the same and different. In some ways life has made me more comfortable in my skin but less certain in my knowing – recognizing that the Mystery that is life and life eternal is both evasive and yet so near to me as to be one with the seeing me. My younger self was grasping after this truth that now more fully grasps me. I know that there is so much that I don’t know and I settle into my limits more easily.
Of course, doing this trip with dear friends made it so much more touching. What a gift to share memories, recall dear professors now gone, recollect project that were formative and fortunate, and simply eat together. We had not met since before the pandemic, and it was time to be together again. In the midst of such blessed change, it is also a blessing to find those red threads of love that tie our past events into the story that I am, that we are.
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