blessed is the spot

As I write this post, I'm sitting on a pillow on the ground. My laptop is perched on one of the many boxes filling our soon to be ex-aparment. Most of our furniture has been dismantled. 

It's a funny thing, to move. At least, that part when all the furniture comes down. Suddenly that space that you knew so intimately, filled with those things that had become background noise in the rooms that had become your own, metamorphoses into another place - one that you barely recognise, even though the floor and walls are still made of the same materials, and the number of square metres hasn't budged. But it suddenly becomes foreign -  it becomes someone else's.  

The big move is tomorrow. We're not going very far - about 200 metres to be exact. To a place big enough to fit all our stuff, and closer to the families whose children will participate in the class and youth group that will take place in the new living room.

After four years of living in this home, in this neighbourhood, what touched me most about us moving on from this place is how it affected some of the youth of this neighbourhood - those that had spent countless hours here. I guess I had begun to take for granted the way the space both reflected and shaped the community that it often housed - the many quotes and prayers decorating our walls, each one attached to a melody known by heart by all these youth, that we'd select from to sing together each time we gathered for a devotional meeting. The coloured papers upon which they were written had too become part of the scenery. As had the messily but adorably coloured in pictures that the children had made in their weekly classes over the years, each image representing a virtue they had learned about, like service or generosity or kindness. Just like the experiences of all these people, these things had simply become a part of this home.

 

A home that, to our great fortune, has come to represent more than just our space, the married couple. When we moved in, we had hoped that it could become a space for service. A space for learning. A space for worship. A space for reflecting and for developing qualities, together, with our community. 

So when some of these youth - who have passed a good part of these four years between these walls in pursuit of these same goals - expressed sadness at the fact that we were moving on from this space, it was heartening. One of them volunteered straight away to organise a final devotional meeting to part ways with the apartment. My husband recounted how another, upon hearing the news, also said she'd really miss the place. He reminded her that she and her family had also moved house recently, and that it wasn't really such a big deal after all. She replied, "It's not the same. We didn't experience the same things in our home that we did here. We didn't have the same memories as we do here."

When he told me this, I felt like these hopes had been realised. The time spent here during these crucial four years of adolescence was a critical part of their development as it was ours. And this space was as much theirs' as it was ours - a genuine place of meeting. Where a sense of place is more than attachment to a room, more than being able to feel your way habitually around the furniture in the dark. But rather a culmination of experiences, where the nature and quality of those experiences determines the strength of this sense of place. Coming to a weekly junior youth group session where you engage in meaningful discussions with friends, plan service projects together and pursue your individual and collective advancement (and also celebrate birthdays, sing together, dance, laugh...) is a very particular experience.

So perhaps then these are some characteristics of these places of meeting? Places where everyone can come together, feel at home, develop together, acquire memories? The four walls bore witness to countless meetings, classes, discussions, prayers and acts of service (sometimes simultaneously). Often people would come over just to do their homework, to talk, to say hello. It wasn't so unusual to hear an unexpected knock at the door - or when the door downstairs was locked (as it often was), to hear a young, shrill voice shouting up from the footpath below, calling us to open up.

As one of the junior youth commented, this apartment is so blessed.

The four walls might look different now as the furniture lies sprawled in pieces all over the floor. But whatever lived between these four walls lives on inside of us - just like we live in places they also live in us. As the keys to physical locations pass from hand to hand, the moments spent within them endure. The bonds that were formed and deepened in this place will carry over into the next one. 

And so we will move tomorrow knowing that we're not going very far, nor really leaving anything behind. Rather we are continuing, as we go on to the next place of meeting. 

One of the youth has already told us that he wants to organise the first devotional meeting in the new apartment. He said he already knew what the first text would be. It starts, "Blessed is the spot..."

"Blessed is the spot,

and the house,

and the place...

...where mention of God hath been made

and His praise glorified."