Brent
The Episcopal Center at the University of Chicago
House

Welcome to the Episcopal Center at the University of Chicago, serving students from all Chicago-area campuses. Services are held during the academic year on Sunday evenings at 5:30 pm at Brent House (followed by a free vegetarian meal) and on Thursdays at noon at Bond Chapel on campus. Our calendar offers a full selection of programs and services, made possible by our creative and dedicated staff. Please take a moment to tell us about yourself, register for our quarterly newsletter and our weekly email schedule, or email the chaplain, The Rev. Stacy Alan.

Ours is a distinguished history of more than seventy years; Brent House is widely recognized as a prominent center of young adult faith development, exploration of the Christian faith and entry into the Episcopal Church through an annual inquirers' series, and a center of warm hospitality. Brent House is a ministry of The Episcopal Church Council at the University of Chicago, within the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago of The Protestant Episcopal Church of the USA, a member of the Worldwide Anglican Communion.

Services are held during the academic year on Sunday evenings at 5:30 pm at Brent House (followed by a free vegetarian meal) and on Thursdays at noon at Bond Chapel on campus.

Spring 2008

The other day I walked into the bathroom where my daughter was supposed to be brushing her teeth to find her filling up a shower cap with water. Water was everywhere. It was bedtime and I was irritated that she was playing rather than getting ready for bed. But, Mom, she said, I was just getting a drink! There happened to be no cups in the bathroom and instead of going downstairs to the kitchen to find one, she looked for a solution within arm's reach. It was not a terribly workable solution, but it was kind of fun and certainly one I never would have considered. She was achieving (or at least working toward achieving) the task I'd sent her upstairs to do and she had been able to look at the things around her in a completely new way. (I did, however, go and get her a real glass that wasn't nearly as much fun so that she'd finally go to bed!)

This theme of letting go of how things get done has been a theme running through the past quarter for me. Under a veneer of flexibility, I am one of those people who likes the illusion of control, who has a vision of things and expects the external world to conform, to a certain extent, to that internal vision. That's fine as far as it goes, but when one is working in a community where all of its members are supposed to empowered to minister, it doesn't go very far.

It's one thing, I've found, to talk about empowering a community. It's quite another thing, however, to allow it to happen. I can celebrate all of the brilliant ideas and wonderful projects that the board, or the peer ministers, or the residents can come up with. But I usually have a picture of how it will all work, and when there's a different version of how to get there—a shower cap, say, instead of a cup—I am often resistant. If I can't overcome that resistance and engage in a conversation about the different ways things can be done, the different ways to achieve our common dream, then I limit what we can do. My view of the world remains the same and God's ability to bring something new and exciting into the world has been curtailed.

Brent House is blessed with gifted people—the students, the board, the residents, our friends—who are deeply committed to our mission to minister to the University of Chicago community, to provide a safe and affirming place to wrestle with questions of faith or simply to rest in God's delight, and to encourage the interplay between the urgency of the Gospel and the discipline of the life of the mind. Their gifts will allow us to minister far beyond any little project I might come up with.

To let go of my need to control, to remember that our mission is big enough and challenging enough that we need all of the creativity of all of our members, to listen carefully to the vision of those God has placed around me—if I can do these things, I am reminded that God can work the same kinds of creative surprises in my own life, in the places where I try to grasp tightly to my limited view, in the places where I see no solution. In those places, God—usually through other people—can break open my little box and allow me to see that what I thought was just a shower cap might actually be a fountain of living water.

Peace,

Stacy+

Brent House
5540 S. Woodlawn Ave.
Chicago, IL 60637
773/947-8744