Hand-Holding and Urbanization
This is rough and barely edited- scattered, not smooth.
The Subway:
The subway is crowded because it’s Friday night. The Kanye look-a-like, tries to get a number, says we’re on “da foreva train, shoulda’ brought some snacks.” I would have brought fruit snacks. Shannon and I are supposed to stay in Chelsea but somehow we manage to venture to Harlem at two in the morning.
I’m okay with this, don’t even give me a book to read, I’m a sponge, let me soak it in. People watching is prime here, on this sad plastic orange seat covered in graffiti and expired flyers, on this not-so-fast moving machine. Thank you, mass transit for bridging every social and economic gap, for bringing together the rich and poor, the young and old.
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Central Park, etc:
The wind plays with my still-too-short hair and I stare to the sky. The textures draw me in; brick meets blue meets absolutely brilliant. God and man converge somewhere between the architecture and the stratosphere. A grand collaboration. Somehow, the transition feels perfect, like God dreamed up the city and the sky for us. The buildings stagger towards Heaven. We keep using our own two hands to get to Heaven.
I’m stopped, paralyzed even. The city is breathing deep breaths of new life and I beg my lungs to take in all they can bare; I’m on the table with the stethoscope to my chest, “Three big breaths.”
Urbanization is to be celebrated. Look at what God has so graciously, so generously willed us to do. Go and decorate the Earth. Our buildings and bodies create movement; arranging ambiance to the green that grows through the cracks of concrete and dust.
I can smell and see and taste and hear the city around me. I’m taking it in as thoroughly as my brain will allow. Let me feel it all. One second my brain tells me the most important thing to remember is the smell of the dirty street; the next is the sound of a children’s laugh. I categorize and tell myself to remember. Remember this.
My eyes close and I feel the world wrap around me, still moving, never silent. It goes and goes and goes. That’s the beauty of this place. It’s built and breaks down and is built back again. It’s made better and improved upon. The human condition as seen in the skyline: never without fault, always fragmented, forever needing repair.
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The Subway, Part 2 (The Most Important Part):
They kiss on the subway, the young couple. No concern for us, for themselves. I can’t help but look. This is Lady Gaga and a bad car accident, I know I shouldn’t but I just can’t help myself. I wonder whom they are, where they’re going. Not where they’re going, where they’re going. Wonder if they even know.
And it all changes. Right here, on the subway, in the city. Everything I’ve ever thought about the meshing of our lives is different now. The coming together, that feeling I’ve always had to be alone, to do it all on my own and to not share what was never mine. The cry for individualism and harboring of my uniqueness makes sense no longer.
It’s in the sharing that we come to life, where we come to know who we are. It’s where we lose ourselves, not for someone else but for the sake of the Cross. It’s in the sharing that I know the preferences I have created are mine as much as the rising of the sun is.
My eyes are open and now I know. We don’t need a hand to hold, we need someone to build the Kingdom with.
