|
Ceremony
prays for holy waters
Chicago Tribune
- 7/23
An
underground sewer, once considered a purely secular part of Chicago's
infrastructure, received some assistance from on high Tuesday.
A Catholic priest, standing over a round, metal manhole cover
in the middle of North Avenue's bustling four lanes of traffic,
offered a blessing for the 48-inch reinforced concrete pipe soon
to be installed, praying for the smooth flow of both the project
and the sewer's eventual contents.
"Blessings
run from the sublime--to this," Rev. Tom Pelton said after
completing his first-ever sewer blessing. "This past Sunday
I blessed two babies, an SUV and an 82-year-old woman who's slowly
passing away, so it runs the spectrum. But I've never done a sewer."
The idea of blessing a public-works project came from Ald. Ariel
Reboyras (30th), who felt the ceremony would be appreciated in
a neighborhood that is largely Hispanic and Catholic. Because
the monthlong project undoubtedly will cause traffic tie-ups and
slow business North Avenue and Pulaski Road, Reboyras figured
residents and shop owners could use all the blessings they could
get.
The
30 or so people who attended Tuesday's ceremony agreed.
"I
think everybody laughed about it at first, but at the same time,
I think a blessing is wonderful idea," said Ramonita Dobis,
who works for the nearby Spanish Coalition for Housing and has
lived in the area for more than 25 years. "It's a good thing."
Religious
experts say that, while unusual, there's certainly nothing wrong
with blessing a sewer.
"In
a sense, anything could be blessed that wasn't profane,"
said Todd Williamson, director for the office of divine worship
of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago. "It would be hard
for me to think of a human situation in our daily lives, as long
as it was not sinful or profane, where you would not want to bless
the experience."
When
it comes to a summer construction site involving dust, noise and
blaring car horns, Pelton raises this simple point: "It's
always better to bless than to curse."
There's
little doubt the sewer project is a blessing for the West Side
community. The current sewer is a 102-year-old brick-and-mortar
pipe. City engineers fear it could collapse and say it is too
small to handle heavy rainstorms, which results in routine street
flooding.
Reboyras
says the improved sewer line is a harbinger of positive change
in a neighborhood that has its share of run-down buildings and
boarded-up storefronts.
"This
sends a message that there's a spark here," Reboyras said
to the crowd. "Things are happening, people are working together.
If we need to have a pastor out here each time we do something,
that's what we'll do."
At
the service, Pelton read his blessing in English and Spanish.
"We
seek your blessing upon the work of our hands and minds, so that
this sewer project may be successful," Pelton prayed.
Before
the sewage pipe invocation, Karen Westerfield Tucker, a professor
of liturgy at Duke University Divinity School, thought she was
the only pastor who had ever presided over anything involving
waste water.
In
the early 1980s, Westerfield Tucker was an associate pastor at
the First United Methodist Church in Rock Island, Ill. She was
asked to perform a dedication ceremony for the church's new septic
system, an assignment that led colleagues to bombard her with
lines like "may our flushes be firm" and "may our
plumbing never clog."
"It's
not something one talks about too much," she said of the
experience.
But
blessings are talked about often in different religions, Westerfield
Tucker said, and are particularly popular among Roman Catholics.
She said people these days seem to seek more opportunities to
receive blessings.
"Certainly
within the church, there has been an increased interest in the
blessing of homes and the consecration of buildings and those
kinds of things," she said. "There's a growing sense
of a need for sacredness."
For
Catholics, a look at the Book of Blessings reveals the wide range
of things for which there are formal blessing rites. You can bless
an athletic event, boats and fishing gear, a factory, fields,
flocks, Christmas trees, wreaths, organs, tools and various means
of transportation.
Which
raises the question: Can we over-bless?
"If
one understands all of life to be sacred, the answer is no,"
Westerfield Tucker said. "But I think it can get to the point
of silliness."
Pam
Kai Tollefson, a Chicago practitioner of feng shui, the Asian
art of creating balance and harmony with the forces of nature,
said the positive energy from Tuesday's blessing should help make
the sewer project a success.
"I
applaud them," said Tollefson, who has performed blessings
on houses and done ceremonies to clear spaces of negative energy.
"It seems like this gets at that common thread that runs
through everything, that ties us all together. The power of all
this is something we just have a very superficial knowledge of."
Tollefson
also noted that residents and shop owners along the construction
site might want to consider hanging wind chimes in their windows
to help block any negative energy the project might create.
The
blessing may have been good, but it never hurts to have a back
up.
NOTICE: In accordance with Title
17 U.S.C., section 107, some material is provided without
permission from the copyright owner, only for purposes of
criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair
use" provisions of federal copyright laws. These materials
may not be distributed further, except for "fair use,"
without permission of the copyright owner.
|