When I was in graduate school I was asked to spend some time with perspective students and to give them a tour of the school. There was a standardized tour that they had written up directions and instructions for, but anyone who knows me knows that if you are asking me to do something it will be my version. My tour was a little different and if you ask me more comprehensive than the standard tour. The highlight if you happened to be assigned to me was a trip outside through some bushes down a dirt path to the corner of the seminary’s first building. As you came through the overgrowth you reached a forgotten, though once hallowed place where the “cornerstone” was laid and inscribed with the words, “Christ Jesus Himself being our chief cornerstone.” For me this was an important introduction to the school. It wasn’t because I am a Christian and wanted them to see that Christ is the cornerstone, it was more about showing people the thing on which the institution was built upon. The cornerstone is a symbol of what is or at least was important to the builders and framers of the school and there is something significant in that. It is a Christian school though it promotes the study of all religions and is both ecumenical and interfaith in its scope and practice. The point for me was to introduce the importance of having a cornerstone; of having something substantial holding you up, because without it you just become whatever they teach you and you loose whatever “self” you started with. You can learn many things, but without something substantial in you and of you to apply those learnings to, you never really gain knowledge, you just have stuff that you know.

On Sunday January 31st, 2010 I attended the laying of the cornerstone of First United Methodist Church in Seattle. First Church was literally the first church of any kind in Seattle and they have just moved into their fourth building after a long process of deciding where to move and what would work. The other part of the process for the church was to decide what they are about, what their “cornerstone” really is. It is not easy to be a downtown city church in today’s suburban world where less people live in the city and churches are swallowed up by the skyscrapers and highrises that supposedly mark progress. First church decided to stay downtown (though in a different part of downtown than before) and to be a downtown church. They decided that that was who they had to be. It is a unique place where multimillionaires and homeless people can and do worship together. They built themselves on an ideal of being able to reach the population of the city around where they are. The building includes a social services center and is very intentionally an open place while at the same time being a safe place. Their “cornerstone” is laid as a foundation of being a welcoming and serving presence in the heart of the city. The motto is, “serving the soul of the city” and the whole thing works because everyone that is a part of it understands that that is their foundation and they refuse to let even themselves get in the way of this collective ideal.

As I walked into their new building on a day that was proclaimed as First Church Day in the City of Seattle by the mayor and First Church week in King County by the county executive, I felt compelled to think of my own cornerstone. In one of the classes I teach regularly the question we ask ourselves on the first day is, “what do you believe in so strongly that you would stake your life on it?” in other words, “what is your cornerstone?” A cornerstone has elements of faith, family, national/cultural identity and any number of other factors. Whether you feel strongly about any of those, they have an influence both good and bad on how we form the foundation of ourselves and of our core beliefs, which become our cornerstone. It may even be that we rebel against one of these things, but that rebellion defines us just as much as a strong affinity does. For both an individual and for an organization like First Church or my school, our cornerstone is constantly being built upon, but those things, which are most important remain the same even if they sometimes seem to get covered up by the things we place around them. These aren’t opinions or ideas, because the reality is that we all should be open enough to change any one of those, but there are some things that simply are who we are and we couldn’t change them even if we wanted to. The important thing for all of us is to take the tour from time to time; through the bushes and down the overgrown path to remind ourselves of the things that matter most, the things, which hold us up and make us who we are. As long as we can hold onto these the whole world can crumble around us, but we can always rebuild because our cornerstone is intact.