By Dan Quach
In downtown Vancouver if you walk from Robson to Alberni street you will see this huge boulder mounted on glass. The artist Henrik Ha-kan-son took a 6,000 pound granite boulder from a quarry near Squamish, cut it into 4 equal sections then sandwiched it between panes of ¾” inch of tempered glass. In this piece Henrik Ha-kan-son explains that “the rock and its reflection floats, as if mirroring the moving planet, an expression of the measure of time, weight and value, contrasting with its surroundings and the sky to create its own unique ecology.”
Looking at the segmented sculpture what I think about is the multiple identities I have had in life. When I was younger I had my social life separated into distinct groups. I had my church friends, my friends from school, my LGBTQ friends and coworkers. I would always hang out with each group separately and never mingled the groups together. With the separate identities came more stressors in my life as everyone only saw a certain part of me. Tired of this situation of being selective I decided to hold an experiment.
One day, I threw a dinner party, but invited people from each one of these groups. I was really afraid my friends from different groups wouldn’t get along with each other. Where my work friends might bore others to death about work and programming , and my church friends might be too ‘churchy’ for my other friends.
Like the evil person running the experiment, after serving food, I stepped back in the corner just to observe how all the interactions were going. I was kind of shocked as the night panned out pretty perfectly. I realized I hadn’t given my friends enough credit to accept and be around more diverse crowds and some people even branched off and became closer friends with each other than they had been with me!
As the months progressed and I held these dinner parties I also felt my identity solidify more. One where I am a Christian, who works in tech, who went to a University whose mascot was an Anteater. Most importantly as my social networks mingled my church friends were able to show and reflect the winsome nature of Jesus while sharing a meal.
Ephesians 2:20-22 says “As God’s household, you are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. The whole building is joined together in him, and it grows up into a temple that is dedicated to the Lord. Christ is building you into a place where God lives through the Spirit.”
The cornerstone is used in masonry as a reference point for all other stones helping determine the alignment and position of the whole structure. In addition to Christ as our cornerstone we are meant to be part of a community of faith which builds up the place where God’s love and hope is experienced.
Your turn to reflect: Is your Christian identity the element that integrates or divides the facets of your life?