This was the day when I had the sense that this crazy idea just might work. One morning after our new triptych (a sign with three chalkboard panels) was up, a mother was writing a prayer for the people of Syria. Her young daughter asked her to specifically add the children of Syria. And then an elderly lady, a stranger to this young family, walked up, read what they had written, and then joined them at the chalkboard, and together, they lamented the ways that the human family divides itself all too often.
This encounter is why, for several years, I have longed for an outdoor triptych. A trip-what, you might say? Well, awhile back, when I walked up to a congregation in the diocese where I serve (the Diocese of California, which is most of the Bay Area), I came across a novel sign out in front of their church doors, next to the sidewalk.
It had three panels (hence my yearning for a triptych), each panel a section of chalkboard. And on the chalkboard passersby wrote prayers, hopes and thanksgivings. It was an outdoor, public Prayers of the People. I was stunned.
For us at All Souls, the fullness of time for a triptych came this past fall. At the same time as our Evangelism team was looking to be more intentional about inviting people to join us at All Souls (read: Invite them as part of Gathering), our Justice & Peace team was wanting to offer public statements of support and advocacy. And our Communications team was trying to create an informal, yet visible, way to let the surrounding community know what we are up to (read: communicate our deep gladness to those around us to the hungry world around us). As we began our planning, amongst the practical questions of city code and concrete footings, we found ourselves consistently coming up against questions of identity. Questions like, “Who are we? How we want to present ourselves to the world? What kinds of conversations do we want to engender in our neighborhood?”
We started from the ground up. We wanted the structure itself to be in concert with our established aesthetic, so the lines are simple and evoke the design of the rest of our signage and the church architecture (read: is our culture consistent?). Another expression of our identity came through the materials, as most of the triptych serves as a kind of a chalkboard. We wanted people to know that within a visibly formal context is a community that isn’t afraid to encounter the messy and transient nature of life.
Our identity found its’ way onto the three panels themselves. The left panel serves as an announcement for the events of our parish life—informal, café-style invitations on the top half, and magnetized formal flyers on the bottom. The right panel serves as a rotating space for the stands that we take as a Christian community. It is meant to be a visible witness of faith to all who pass by.
But it is the central panel of the triptych that is the most interactive. Each week, often in concert with the homily that Sunday, we write up a prompt, inviting people to finish a sentence. We are hoping that this conveys a core value of our parish––that we value dialogue and conversation (read: dialogue is much more important to us than debate). We really do want to know what matters most to the people who live, work, and study in our part of the world.
The results of this invitation have been beyond our expectations. The first day that the triptych went up was Sunday, December 18th. Passersby were invited to respond to the prompt, “I am waiting for…”. We were stunned when we emerged from the service just about an hour later to see that people had already begun to respond. As we were worshipping, people were praying with us, using the triptych to ground their prayer. And it has continued ever since.
Now this space has been, and will be, mis-used. Some people have chosen this medium to be a venue for vulgar and/or obscene responses. But even these rare mis-uses have served as yet another way to understand who we are. When this happens, we evaluate the intent of the message, and if necessary, erase it to leave space for other responses to our prompts (read: sometimes self-differentiation involves setting boundaries with erasers). And yes, our posters, “Jesus was a refugee,” have gone missing, perhaps removed by the invisible hand of the wind, perhaps by hands that belong to humans. When that happens, we replace them. Our stands continue.
After a few months of seeing how this sign has grounded prayer for our neighborhood, and has served as a much needed source of dialogue, we have taken the next step in engaging those who vicariously participate in the life of our parish: social media (read: there are lots of people developing the faith through All Souls, but only some of them show up on a Sunday morning). The triptych now has its’ own Twitter handle: #SignOnCedar. In addition to posting each week’s prompt and responses, we will be asking people far and wide what they would encourage people who walk by the corner of Cedar and Spruce to consider. Our hope is that our circle of our dialogue continues to expand.
God only knows what the next unexpected interaction with this triptych might be. My guess, though, is that in it and through it, we will learn more about our God and ourselves.
–The Rev. Phil Brochard, Rector of All Souls Episcopal Parish, Berkeley.
Building the Triptych: