Dear Friends,

Welcome to worship for Sunday, October 23, 2022. It wasn’t my intention at the beginning of the week but an obituary in the paper the other day caused me to start thinking about sacred space. It was the midweek notice of the death of acclaimed Franco-Manitoban architect Etienne Gaboury.

Mr. Gaboury was most familiar to me as the architect who designed Precious Blood (or Précieux Sang) Roman Catholic Church. It is the unmistakeable teepee shaped church that one can notice to the left off of St. Mary’s Rd in the borderlands between St. Boniface and St. Vital. What I found out in reading about him last week is just how many Winnipeg and Manitoba landmarks are the result of his long and distinguished career. Including many churches, half a dozen of which I have been in without knowing their common origin.

To some the idea of sacred space is a bit of an anachronism. Why would anyone set aside space for worship alone with the potential that it only gets used one day a week, and for just over one hour at that? For the last twenty years, nearly every new church building project I have heard of, across all denominations, has had ‘multi-purpose’ as its rallying cry. Which is not to say there is anything wrong with that. It could not be more appropriate to worship in the same space where one gathers, celebrates, sings, plays, even eats. Communion takes its inspiration from early Christian communities who gathered around a table to ‘tell the story and share a meal.’

However, I have always enjoyed visiting and experiencing different worship places. That includes those rushed tours of gothic cathedrals, ecumenical and interfaith experiences in Winnipeg and beyond, small beautiful prairie churches dotting the landscape, and maybe most of all, the churches and worship places of my friends. I add this last one because sacred space is not all about beauty or magnificently designed works of architecture.

Space is made sacred by the hearts and intentions of those who gather therein. A beautiful church is largely, mostly, a matter of how endearing it is to those who worship there. If someone experiences depth of meaning and closeness of community, if songs are sung and prayers are prayed, then any church can be a cathedral of the heart.

One of Etienne Gaboury’s legacies was that he took the form of sacred space to heart and felt that it ought not solely be directed to God, but should somehow connect with the region in which it was located, the people who are part of that region. In the case of Precious Blood, which is unique and inviting and beautiful, the fact that it is teepee shaped and home to a French-Canadian congregation near St. Boniface, the birthplace of the Métis Nation, is not a coincidence. It’s a way of saying that this particular church belongs in this particular place. It would look out of place almost anywhere else in the world. But here, it is nearly perfect.

I am grateful for the people of Charleswood who sought to have sacred space in this neighbourhood one hundred years ago. What they began has become our home, our sanctuary, our place of peace.

Grace and peace,

Michael

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Read this week’s scripture lesson here: Jeremiah 31:27-34

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