Not about the buildings

It isn’t about the building. For the longest time, I thought it was. Like an early human scratching a drawing on a cave wall, I wanted to leave some sign that I’d passed this way. With some very special people, I was a part of designing and building a chapel that now sits prominently at the center of a school campus, but it wasn’t until my recent visit that I realized the building was never the point.

It was a bright, clear morning, and I arrived early for the annual Founders’ Day service. I hoped to wander through the space alone before the students and guests arrived but was surprised to see two old students of mine already there. One, the guest speaker, was in the pulpit practicing his sermon, the other, a dear friend of his, offering insights and suggestions. We greeted one another like long-lost friends and soon I was also listening and instructing like I used to.

As people began arriving, I took my seat in the back and was surrounded by retired teachers with whom I once worked. “It’s like the band’s getting back together,” someone joked, and my heart took a deep breath as I remembered how sacred our time had been.

A dear parent from my days at the school arrived and sat beside me with her daughter who now had a child at the school. They’d recently lost their husband/father, and I shared an idea I got during his funeral - the kind of idea that made me squirm like a child on Christmas morning. It was a way to remember him forever, and she loved it as much as I hoped she would. We sat by the aisle so they could beam as their handsome son/grandson made his triumphant entrance. It was as bitter and sweet as life gets. I was so glad they were here to see it; I was so sad he was not.

The organ began and we sang in a way that made the students turn around and take notice. The sermon was delivered with poise and brilliance as he spoke from his heart of his days at the school and how they had shaped the man he’d become. I don’t remember much else about the service because I was sitting back taking in the beauty - not of the building but all that was going on inside it.

“I guess that’s the point,” I said to myself. “I guess it always was.”

I left the service recalling all the other ways I’d forgotten that important lesson along the way. I thought about the houses I focused on and not the conversations at the dining room table, the parties and not the nights reading before bed, the titles and not the work, the life goals and not the daily moments.

I doubt I’m unique, but I now see I’ve had it all wrong: It’s not so much what we build or achieve in our lives, but what happens within them that matters.