Wednesday, October 17, 2018 // The Statement
6C
band that plays Albert Ayler and John
Coltrane and if that’s what you want, we can
do that,’” Rush said. “I said, ‘I’m not willing
to do it once a month. It needs to be every
week because otherwise, you’re just messing
around.’”
Every Sunday at 5:00 p.m., Canterbury
House would fill with students and jazz
fans alike to hear Rush and his band
Quartex play newly arranged hymns and
experimental jazz pieces. This blending of
worship and music was both a callback to
the folk services attended by Rubin and the
like in the ’60s, but also a step further.
I don’t normally enjoy phone interviews.
You can’t engage with your source the same
way you can in person. Also, you always
step on each other’s comments when trying
to make it a conversation because you can’t
see the other person slightly open their
mouth when they want to say something.
Chatting with Rush feels like shooting
the breeze with an old friend, even over the
phone.
“What I always did was whatever read-
ing that was going to be used by the priest for
that sermon that Sunday, I would find music
from avant-garde jazz tradition that would
fit that really, really well,” Rush said.
As someone who was not raised in a reli-
gious household and could count the num-
ber of times I’ve set foot in any church on
my hands and toes, the music of the church
was always the only thing that could get me
inside the door. I can say I would have been
at Jazz Mass every weekend.
In Rush’s eyes, Canterbury’s role on cam-
pus is an incubator for students to not only
to examine faith and beliefs, but also explore
their range as musicians –– just as Franke
did in the ’60s –– and engage in social justice.
“Lots of groovy music that students are
doing on their own, there’s just not really a
place for them to do it, so they do it at Can-
terbury,” Rush said. “It’s a scene and scenes
are really, really important historically and
scenes are important socially, and out of
scenes come activism.”
L
ining the walls of the Canterbury
House foyer above the large bay
windows facing North Quad Resi-
dence Hall are CD cases — Ornette Coleman,
Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder and the like —
interspersed with images of what appear to
be saints like Mary Magdalene and Hilde-
gard of Bingen. But not all of them are reli-
gious figures. Martin Luther King Jr., Isaac
Newton, Albert Einstein make appearances.
No one else could have constructed this
symbolic exhibition of the bonds between
Episcopal sainthood and jazz iconography
other than Rush.
Chaplain Matthew Lukens, in a green
flannel with the typical black shirt and white
collar underneath, confirms my suspicions.
When I asked about his casual attire mixed
with the collar, Lukens said he will probably
wear the collar less as he gets older. For now,
he wears it because, to him, it means the
Episcopalian Church is “willing to invest in
leadership with someone who’s young and
queer.”
Lukens celebrates his one-year anni-
versary as chaplain at Canterbury in Octo-
ber. Prior to his accepting of the position,
Lukens was hiking the Appalachian Trail
and, before that, was working as Vicar of
Emmanuel Church in the Diocese of Hawaii.
At Lukens’s feet rests Bear, the House’s
pet dog, who is skittish at first but just wants
you to chase him and play. Naturally, I have
to oblige.
Next to Lukens is Music, Theatre & Dance
senior Kenji Lee, the coordinator for Can-
terbury’s Concert Series. He also goes by
“Music Guy” or “Dude of All Concerts.”
When Lukens first arrived in Ann Arbor,
Lee gave him the rundown on what this
space was and what it had the potential to be.
Lukens said he had always wanted to work
at a student ministry and when Lee outlined
Canterbury’s four main pillars of opera-
tions — faith community events, food min-
istries, the concert space and social activism
— Lukens quickly discovered Canterbury’s
goals aligned with his own.
“The first time we met, you talked about
Canterbury House as a ‘compassionate space
for all people,’” Lukens said to Lee.
In Lukens’s eyes, Lee’s description
lives up to its history. But Lukens quick-
ly discovered, after learning more about
the institution’s legacy in Ann Arbor,
that he could not have bigger shoes to
fill.
During his first month at Michigan,
Lukens attended a lecture on the Lav-
ender Scare, the moniker given to the
persecution of LGBTQ individuals in
the federal government during the Cold
War. Upon talking to the lecturer and
other faculty members who had attend-
ed the University in the ’60s, he got to
know how important the building was
and the duty he inherited.
“I said ‘My name’s Matthew, I’m the
new chaplain at Canterbury House’ and with
that, their entire expression changed on
their faces and they lit up and said, ‘Canter-
bury House? When I was an undergrad here
back in the ’60s, that was where all the activ-
ists hung out. I’m a secular Jew but I was at
Canterbury House. It was great.’” Lukens
said some recounted to him. “The history
here is really well established … and I really
take that as a mandate in my time here to fig-
ure out how can we best live up to that.”
However, Lukens knows reveling in the
past and trying to restore the glory days of
Canterbury won’t serve the community
as well as allowing Canterbury to evolve
with the present times. Lukens still encour-
ages any student groups, be they political
in nature or not, to use the space and plan
Alec Cohen/Daily
Evan Chambers performs at the Canterbury House Thursday, October 4.
“In Rush’s eyes, Canterbury’s role on
campus is an incubator for students to
not only to examine faith and beliefs,
but also explore their range as musi-
cians –– just as Franke did in the ’60s
–– and engage in social justice.”
Alec Cohen/Daily
SMTD senior Kenji Lee, concert coordinator, at the Canterbury House Thursday, October 4.