- echoing the sacred - worship installation -

Echoing the Sacred became the name for this first ditch effort in creating a space for uni-type people to reflect on the easter story. The idea behind the name and the installation was that it was a remembering... now if we assume that people must first know to remember, then there also had to be an element of 'telling'... There was a hope mixed up in this remembering that by listening back into stories of faith, we somehow become caught up in the story - the echo if you will.

Echoes as reverberations, resonances, repetitions, ricochets keep coming back, they keep 'bouncing back'... so too are the stories of faith - stories of our souls... It was hoped that by allowing these ancient stories to speak, we would encounter the sacred as we heard them echo through the centuries... A hope, i believe, that was very much realised!

The worship installation was set up at the university of wollongong Mon-Thurs of holy week, april 2006. The space we used was an old fibro cottage adjacent to the main campus. It had 5 rooms which we used to create 5 stations, telling something of the days before jesus died. The installation did not attempt to speak of his death, betrayal or even the promised hope of the whole crucifixion-resurrection narrative. Rather it was a chance to pick up and play with some of the 'ordinary experiences' of jesus before he died. Ordinary experiences that as we reflect pause and ponder we perhaps see no longer as 'ordinary', but rather 'sacred'. As such the stations (in order) were:

1. the anointing of Jesus by the woman (mary?)
2. the woes
3. the overturning of the temple
4. the supper
5. the footwashing

People were encouraged to follow a path of arrows directing them to the stations in that order. At each station participants were invited to interact with the story, and in some cases become part of the story.


after participants moved through the 5 stations, they came to the back balcony of the house. this funnily enough became the surrogate 6th station... a space for chilling out, drinking coffee (fair-trade!) and eating chocolate, & chatting... a community space.

Each station will follow as an individual post