The nexus of Two Rivers Church was a mostly ordinary living room in a mostly ordinary townhouse on a mostly ordinary street in a mostly ordinary city called Guelph. This was just over 10 years ago, so, you could say that, loosely, this is our mostly ordinary 10th anniversary! We are people who celebrate the ordinary, because, we trust that God is always arriving into those ordinary places opening up the possibility that we will notice something is happening that is not immediately obvious to the casual observer. We are talking about the distinct possibility of encounter with the holy. This does not have to be, and rarely is, an earth shattering experience; it is more like an ‘aha', an insight that brings one out of a stupor and into aliveness. We think that the wonderful possibility of more aliveness in Christ is a wonderful thing to discover in the world, and a wonderful thing to offer to the world as well. So this Fall, in our 11th year, we continue to gather in Living Rooms to share these experiences, and to remind each other that they happen more often than we know, and to encourage each other to stay alert to the possibility. We hope you can join us there and get in on the ordinary to discover the extraordinary joy of life with God. GS
A Sacrament of the Ordinary
As we continue to draw your attention to the Goodness Project videos week by week in this blog, I’m reminded of the beauty of ordinary people and places. It is human nature to exalt and draw attention to celebrity, extraordinary human achievement, and exceptional places in nature and the built environment, but at Two Rivers we have always emphasized the sacrament of the ordinary.
In fact, we want to be set free from the addiction to hyperbole that we mainline day in and day out on our media machines. The irony is that we’re using media machines to tell these stories, but, maybe while there, we can learn the arts of temperance and modesty and humility, those unwelcome strangers in our lives.
The people in these videos are not slick or polished, particularly eloquent or brilliant, they are simply aware (and becoming aware even as they are asked great questions by the interviewers off camera) of the importance of having an ordinary story that is woven into the fabric of goodness that exists here in our neighbourhoods.
We also have discovered that this kind of practice leads us closer to encountering God in the ordinary, and the awareness that God inhabits the small and ordinary things of our lives with great love. GS
Watch The Goodness Project video — Stories of Our City: Lisa Downey
Lisa Downey describes the similarities she sees between her home of St. John’s, Newfoundland, and Guelph, the connections she has formed with The Vienna customers, and how the restaurant has become a cornerstone for many generations of Guelph citizens.