iv.Narrative as gift

It is an inherent human tendency to find meaning in story. Ask someone to introduce themselves, to say who they are, and you will find them rehearsing part of the narrative which has led them to the present moment. Yet the narrative of a person’s life is not sufficient, in and of itself, to ground the meaning of that life. Why? Because every individual lacks final permanence. There is a need, therefore, to embed one’s own story within a broader narrative which can encompass one’s own and so protect its meaning. Such broader narratives might include that of one’s family (hence the growing popularity of genealogy), one’s town, or one’s country. It might also include the institutions to which one belongs.

This propensity to embed one’s own meaning within a narrative greater than one’s own creates a series of nested horizons which, in a similar way to the cosmological argument for God, ultimately point toward the transcendent plane, the ultimate horizon. Thus, within a Christian perspective, what comes into view is the promise of the Gospel that one’s own life can find meaning and permanence through inclusion in the Trinitarian life of God. Here God’s story, as it were, becomes the gift of the supreme grounding of our own. Yet wherever meaning is sought via a narrative broader than one’s own there exists a suggestive resonance with this gift of the Gospel of Christ.

If this argument is accepted, then it places great onus on a Church Foundation university because it raises the stakes of what it might mean for those who are part of its community, staff and students, to inhabit that institution’s story. This is because such a university has the potential to become a mediating narrative that links and connects the stories of its members with the larger Christian narrative. To what extent then, we have to ask, does one’s university’s story open onto the Christian narrative, and through which points of access?

Chaplaincy has a vital part to play in being just such a site of connection, but a wider channel of connection is required than simply chaplaincy alone. In particular, it needs to encompass the models of education employed. Education predominantly for the sake of personal advancement will create little resonance with the Christian narrative. Education as part of a quest to order aright one’s relationship to that which can be discerned as true will resonate far more strongly.

The experienced culture of the university is also equally vital; it will need to model and enact that to which it desires to draw attention. Mere participation in the institution, on the part of its members, needs to give way to a deeper sense of belonging where a significant degree of mutual influence is both possible and permissible between the stories of those who comprise the university and the university’s story itself. Engendering a profound sense of shared ownership of the university is thus highly desirable. The university’s nature and function cannot be dictated by a small minority with the majority left to conform to the imposed definition. Rather its character as institution must be allowed to arise organically as the cumulative product of its various contributors. The various mechanisms of representation and decision-making employed by the university cannot, therefore, be a matter of indifference. They carry significant theological weight, for the manner by which the university models the relationship between the part and the whole can either obscure or help reveal the nature of the Gospel as the gift of enfolding narrative.