Time is something that I deeply value. I firmly believe that many significant parts of who we are and what we value tend to develop gradually. Important things to me such as friendships, beliefs, and perspective often do not emerge overnight.
With that said, I occasionally encounter deeply significant moments that occur spontaneously and abruptly, as if from nowhere. Three such moments happened to me this past week. In the first, an ordained United Methodist clergy was reconsecrated at Marsh Chapel. In the second, a rally of students gathered on Marsh Plaza for a shared cause. And in the last, I met a group of three first-year students on a ninth floor study lounge.
I was placing red attendance books in the pews of the sanctuary, a task that I had done over the summer as an office assistant. As I was searching for missing books in the pews, a woman approached me to ask if I could take two people to see the Dean of the Chapel. Later, I spoke to one of these individuals, an alumnus of Boston University, with the director of the chapel and one of the chaplains. He asked if he could be reconsecreated by one of his colleagues, as a gesture of solidarity with the LGBTQ community. During this conversation, he spontaneously invited the three of us to be present at this ceremony.
After the worship service ended, several people gathered in the sanctuary to witness this minister’s reconsecration. As his colleague and the Dean said the liturgy and prayed over him, all who were present put their hands on his shoulder. When I laid my hand on him and listened to the liturgy, I felt the physical connection to him. In that moment, I felt an emotional connection as well. Perhaps there was even a spiritual connection in the sense of unity among those present to witness this minister’s affirmation and reconsecration. That moment, and the experience of these connections, would not have happened had it not been for his spontaneous invitation earlier that morning.
Several days later, I was walking toward Marsh Chapel for my biweekly meeting with Soren. On the plaza, a large crowd had gathered together in a circle. It then hit me that this was the walkout organized by students from the School of Social Work, an event meant to disrupt the normal pace of life at BU to highlight, among many things, the importance of justice and to show solidarity for the Black Lives Matter movement. Of course, this gathering probably required lots of preparation, planning, and execution. In that sense, then, it was not entirely spontaneous.
However, the fact that a large body of students, faculty, staff, and passers-by could gather and raise their voices so suddenly and with such power contains an element of spontaneity. There are certain collective sensations and expressions of emotion that cannot be planned in advance. This, in my opinion, was one such experience. The collective sense of community, outrage, and unity behind a shared cause at that walk-out manifested in real time, and all those present stood there to witness it. People were invited to tie together strips of cloth that were handed out, with the intention of creating a giant chain. That chain was said to symbolize the unity between all those present. And indeed, a sense of binding unity in the chain emerged without warning. The image of holding and weaving together that cloth chain has remained with me since.
More recently, I was working on graduate school applications on the ninth floor of Kilachand Hall, a space I am accustomed to doing work in. I noticed three students were watching a movie together on a couch. I recognized the film to be Hocus Pocus, a Disney film that I had watched with some friends a few years prior on Halloween. I approached them to comment on the film they were watching, and they invited me to join them without even knowing who I was. After I sat down and talked with them, I learned that they were freshmen, and that two of them had met, by chance, that same evening. We stayed on the ninth floor for several hours, talking, watching movies, and sharing pizza. At the end of the evening, I felt a sense of closeness to all of them, despite having only known them for a few hours.
These moments of spontaneity share a few things in common. They all, in some ways, disrupted the normal pace of life, the gradual flow and change of time. Yet they also introduced radical acts of invitation, a hospitality that struck me with their powerful simplicity. Looking back, I am grateful for these moments. I am happy to have encountered them, and hopeful that I will experience them again soon.