Parking Chairs

One of the local news channels was doing a feature on preparations for the Fourth of July in a local community. The story featured a Pittsburgh area tradition, reserving one’s parking space or parade watching space by putting chairs in those spaces. It happens year round. In the winter once one’s parking space is cleared of snow a couple of chairs are place where the car will later be parked. The amazing thing is most people honor this claiming of space.

In the small community of the news feature, the borough council passed an ordinance a few years ago limiting how long the claiming of space by the placing of the chairs to 48 hours before the Fourth of July parade. One local man stated, We don’t want outsiders coming in and taking our space. In some ways that expresses a widely held sentiment. It applies not only to parking spaces and parade watching spaces. The feeling is not particular to the Pittsburgh area, but it is clearly symbolized by the space saving chairs.

Not long ago, a fight broke out at a high school graduation because a couple family members had claimed and were saving seats for other family members who had not arrived yet. Seating was at a premium. The folks seeking a seat and the people saving the seats had a territorial dispute. In the end, none of them were able to see their graduate walk across the stage and receive their diploma.

When I was in seminary I served as a student pastor in a really nice middle class congregation. The clerk of Session sat in the same place Sunday after Sunday. I was co-teaching the senior high church school class. The class asked if they could be released about five minutes early. With snickers they wouldn’t tell is why, but it was easy to see they were up to no good. We relented and dismissed the class. I went to my office to robe, met the pastor, and we went into the worship space together. The senior high class had packed themselves in the usual place of the clerk of session. It was an amazing sight to see the whole class filling the pew awaiting the entry of the clerk. At his usual time the clerk came into the worship area, stopped dead in his tracks, did an about face and walked out in a huff.

On another Sunday in that same congregation we were to celebrate the baptism of an infant. The family were not regular attenders and had arrived early to get seat up front. The pew was packed. Their chosen pew happened to be the regular pew for one of the longer attending families. Upon entering the seating area, the matriarch of the regular attenders walked to the pew with the rest of the family in tow, and announced to the baptism family, This is our pew, please move. Standing commandingly at the end of the pew, it was obvious she wasn’t going to find another place for her family, and the baptism family meekly vacated the pew and found a pew for their family about two-thirds way toward the back of the seating.

How is it that we become so territorially possessive? I do not remember if the baptismal family ever returned to worship with us. I do not think I would have. What are the other ways we more subtly say to others, We don’t want outsiders coming in and taking our space? It might be helpful to ask an outsider come in and help us take an inventory of the barriers we erect to make sure outsides don’t come in and take our space. From parking chairs to steal or concrete fences on national borders we claim as ours that which is not ours. The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it; … (Ps 24:1)