“The God who existed before any religion counts on you to make the oneness of the human family known and celebrated.” —Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
The Chapel of Transfiguration at Kanuga Conference Center in North Carolina has always been a place where the family of God is celebrated in so many ways. I love the outer and inner appearance of the chapel, as it is made of southern Carolina white pine from trees downed in a severe storm in 1936.
My mind always wanders as I sit in the chapel waiting for any service to begin, and I remember more. The wood for the chapel was not pretreated, so there are these unusual dark oval markings on the wood, left by the oiled fingerprints of the workers. The simple prints are more prominent on the ceiling, where it was more difficult for the builders to work.
When I am in the chapel, I feel surrounded not only by the thousands of prayers of people on retreat who have worshiped here, but also by the hands of those who labored on the building.
I think about our own fingerprints and where we leave them as well as the fingerprints of others and how we have been touched by theirs. I especially remember the day sitting in the chapel when I had just found out that my fingerprints for my TSA Pre-check did not go through strongly enough. That meant I would be investigated by the FBI before I got my Pre-check, which would delay my receiving my traveler number! This is the identification you carry in order to go through a special security lane at airports. It allows you to avoid taking off your shoes or coat or putting your laptop out separately. I walk with a cane and have special long lace-up shoes that are difficult to take off and on; so getting my traveler number is significant for me.
I have a new appreciation for the builders of this chapel, who must have been so much stronger and would have been tightly holding onto the wood in order to leave their prints in this sacred space.
I remember other services in this chapel that I wanted never to end. I have memories from a preaching conference, dancing around the altar with Barbara Brown Taylor as I offered the bread and she followed with the wine. I see Bishop Tutu dancing on the green after an amazing closing Eucharist at a retreat led by Trinity Wall Street. Priceless. I remember two Lenten retreats during which we were snowed in. Breathtaking.
I played my harp at one of the retreats that Phyllis Tickle led in this chapel because the scheduled musicians could not get here; and I played at the closing of our spiritual direction class at the Hayden Institute. A privilege.
Thin places like Kanuga can offer us a full album of memories to go back to and remember times when God’s presence and love were immanently present—or, as Gordon Cosby would tell us, times when we lived in the real world.
Joanna. Joannaseibert.com