A Docent for God

In preparation for my Cannon Valley Elder Collegium (http://cvec.org/) class next year, I was rummaging around the internet using Google to find research that related to “noticing”.  (I wrote on this Aging and the Church blog earlier about the importance of “noticing goodness” -- and then passing on what you see so others can share in the good news.)

I also like the term docent.  A docent is a knowledgeable person who acts as a guide -- a person who points out what there is to be seen.  

To me, the two terms, docent and noticing seemed to be a fine combination for talking about the importance (for everybody, not just older adults) to notice beauty, for instance, and share what they see. 

As I was following a trail of the word docent, I ran across a blog post by Magrey deVega, the pastor of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Cherokee, Iowa.

Call and Response Blog. http://www.faithandleadership.com/blog/04-01-2010/magrey-devega-the-pastor-docent  April 1, 2010   retrieved Nov. 11, 2013

A personal note here:  I copied and pasted a segment of Pastor Magrey’s post (below) on my blog draft, but I had only skimmed it at the time.  Only later did I read it carefully.  Perhaps because at the very moment of my careful-reading I was waiting in the library of my church for my wife who was facilitating a mutual help group of women who have had cancer, the words of Magrey deVega took my breath away.  The powerful impact could be because I am an older adult.  It could be because both my wife and I have had cancer.  It could be because I too am transformed by the mystery of communion.  It could be because in the silence of the moment, I realized, again, that God is alive and well and living among us.

         Read slowly

“We [docents] are tour guides, leading people from one gallery to another, shifting their attention from one work of God to the next. At times, we offer language to describe the unutterable: magnificence, awe, anguish. We are wordsmiths for life’s most muted moments.  

Sometimes that moment demands explanation, and like a docent we offer information. We love when someone looks at a familiar passage of scripture in a fresh way, or unpacks some mystery of God in their life that transforms. Those are galleries that buzz with energy.  

But other rooms we visit demand nothing but silence. We pause, speechless, when confronted by the mysteries of our liturgy: the breaking of bread, the lifting of a cup, the pouring of water. And there are times when our silence emerges from the ache and anguish of souls: the graveside of a loved one, a doctor’s diagnosis, or a future swirling with shadows. Our job in these moments may not be to speak but to stand. To let people know they are not alone in this gallery, and that someone has been there before.” – and is with you now on this journey.

Thank you Pastor deVega, for serving as a docent and reminding us of God’s good work. 

As docents all, we stand, together, transformed.

Bruce