Moments of Worship

Farel House

Farel house is cold and drafty at night. The first floor is the chapel.  It’s a bit of a long and narrow room. There’s a grand piano at the front, along with lots of plants, and a big old wooden podium. There’s tables with an assortment of well worn and mismatched chairs lining the wall of windows.

The other wall hosts filled bookshelves and a big stone fire place. Rumor is the fireplace hasn’t been used since the days of Francis Scheuffeur because one time a student while cleaning vacuumed up the ashes, which later after the student had left the building started a fire. (Sometimes you have to enjoy the history of this place.)
There’s two old black leather (fou leather?) couches and a black chair to match. 
One evening a group of students wonder down. One of them is rather skilled on the piano, and the other brings his guitar. The rest of students were told they’d be playing worship music if we wanted to join. 

It’s pitch black outside because it’s 8 o’clock in the winter. The five or six students sit around in different spots, most covered in blankets. They sing their hearts out or pray silently. Occasionally someone requests a song. 

Some of the songs are familar … there is something magical when Pedro from Brazil sings along in Portuguese while the rest of the students sing in English. 
Personally, I left that night with a full heart. It was early on in the term. All I knew about my fellow students was the various places people were from… Brazil, Canada, England, Holland, ect. However, that night all that mattered was that we shared a common faith and a common goal of worship. 

Vevey

Most of the workers go to All Saints Church down in Vevey. It’s an anglican church filled mostly with expats from England.

Normally on Sunday’s one of the workers holds a Bible study for the students and then we have the rest of the day off. However, on this day the workers had arranged to give us rides to their church.It was exciting to be able to see a new city and go to a church in a foriegn country. Also the thing I miss most about my a regular church is the worship music so I looked forward to this aspect of the morning service. 

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We arrived there on Sunday morning and filled up a few pews. The Church itself has stained glass windows and a beautiful arched wooden ceiling. It is a narrow building that words easily echoe through. Even the pews are narrow and squeeked whenever you moved a millimeter or honestly with each breath. 

The service began and the songs were familar to me. My heart welled up as I heard all these British accents singing the very words I sing at home. There’s something transcendent about that. 

Church used to always be a requirement for me, a guilt trip… It meant uncomfortable clothes, smiling at strangers, and booming voices from the pulpit. In all honesty, it sometimes still feels that way. However, some days, like last Sunday it means getting to worship with my friends. It means seeing the workers greet their friends in the church and proudly show their church to us. It meant feeling like I belonged within this new experience. It was a reminder of how thankful I am for this time in Switzerland and for my L’Abri family.

After church we walked around in Levey. There’s a gorgeous lake with this weird fork. My friend Melody who I met last time I was at L’Abri is visiting this week. It felt like something from a movie walking arm and arm with her around the lake. (The poetry definitely ended later in the day as my feet began to hurt from the shoes I choose for church… but you know that’s life.) 

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Instagram Worthy Quotes

Amelia, one of the workers, led a lecture using poetry and meditations from Christian Wiman’s book A Bright Abyss. This lecture is maybe my favorite from L’Abri so far in that as we read through the different passages I felt a kindred spirit it Mr. Wiman. The poetic language used captures the complexity of life without being superfluous. It’s the kind of poetry this mathematician can get behind. Moreover, the discussion we had on each passage encouraged me to actually explore the meaning of the lines… which in all honesty I normally find tedious and pointless; however, I found this discussion helped me enjoy the poems more as well as find them challanging. 

Here are of the lines I loved, identified with, or made me think. 

“You know the value of your doubt by the quality of the disquiet it produces in you.”

“He is everywhere in the world we are too dispirited to love.”

“Live long enough in secular culture, long enough to forget that it is secular culture, and at some point religious belief becomes preposterous to you. Atavistic Laughable (…) It took radical disruption of my life to allow me to see the sanity and vitality of this strange ancient thing. There was no bolt-from-the-blue revelation or conversion or any of that. My old ideas simply were not adequate for the extremes of joy and grief that I experienced, but when I looked at my life through the lens of Christianity-or, more specifically, through the lens of Christ, as much as Christianity seemed (and still seems) uselessly absurd to me – it made sense.”

Amelia left us with the challange to write our own meditation and to be willing to let ourselves be shattered. 

Conveniently, I’ve written a few poems that correlate to the theme of my tattoo. I think I might share them. Reading my poems in person isn’t something I normally do, but L’Abri is in part about personal growth afterall. 

Well in the words of my grandmother, “that’s all I know.” Love you, bye