Chairs

For the last several months, chairs have been stored in the basement mens room of the library at Columbia Seminary. They're lined up from wall to wall facing the urinals and stalls, like in a barber shop. The space where the study desks were is now being used for storage, so the chairs that were displaced (I don't know what happened to the desks) now provide much needed seating in the mens room. We feel a certain relief. Now we know that we don't need to be in a hurry to use the facilities: we can stop and reflect on what we might do; how our day is going; great theological questions. Or, should the urinals and stalls be filled, we now no longer need to stand around awkwardly, but we can calmly sit, until the necessary and appropriate fixture is available. And if we are having a conversation, we can now continue that conversation while our colleague goes about his business. While having a wall of chairs may seem frivolous, a needed service is being provided. What is being modeled here is more than a gesture of expediency on the part of the physical plant; what is being modeled here is an example of our "liberty in Christ." We are being invited to fully relax and find space for meditating in a mens only sanctuary. Here it is that today's male seminary student can find solace, space to be himself, a sabbath from his cares - hence you could call them "sabbath-rooms."
Of course this begs the question: what is the state of the womens room? Are there chairs? How are they arranged? I can say this, chancing a glance after the library had officially closed, after all students and most staff had made a bee-line for the hinterlands and outskirts, that there are two chairs in there, close in and catty-cornered to a single stall. What does that mean? I don't know and I won't speculate. I am happy to say though that both sexes are having their spiritual needs met, that neither is more "privy-ledged" than the other; that men and women are able to discover their means of spirituality in their cloistered space, and find relief.