McBeth67

He came hurtling across the parking lot at me, calling out as he did, “Don’t put any money in the meter- you don’t have to pay on Sunday!”

A new life has arrived in our family, and this photo with her daddy says it all regarding our feelings about her- congratulations, Bobby, Dena, & Max. 

My great-nephew, Max, is a working his way toward his second birthday this summer.  For twenty years there have been no babies in our immediate family, so we are fascinated by him as if we are creatures from another planet who have never seen a toddler before.  He charms us effortlessly and we are delighted by the smallest gesture of affection that we receive from him.  In about one month, he will be joined by a sibling, a sister already named Maggie.  But until she arrives and I am doubly under the spell of these tiny ones, I’ll be chasing around the little guy who wears these black Chuck’s…

At times, life feels something like this photo of an oft-used telephone pole…depending where we are in our journey, we post a bill telling the world that something or someone is important to us, but then later it gets removed, or maybe stapled over in favor of a new thing.  All those lonely staples, they represent whatever mattered enough at the moment, right?  This sounds harsh, perhaps, but I don’t mean it that way.  There is a sadness to it, I suppose.  But it seems to be the way of life, always searching for what is worthy of putting on marquee for all of the world to see. 

And that would be my philosophical musing for today.

I spent a couple of days last week in Pittsburgh, PA.  My family is from this area, possibly on both sides (history is murkier than the Monongahela for some of the genealogy).  One side is clear, and you can’t go too far in western PA without seeing the surname “McKee” (McKees Rocks, McKeesport, McKee Place) or Rutan (the little town of Rutan, which I have yet to visit).  I know that the Rutans, in particular, have been in this area since the 1700’s, (a grandfather from generations back, Samuel, is buried in the Upper Ten Mile Presbyterian Church Cemetary in Prosperity- he was a Revolutionary War veteran).

More recently, my own father was born in PA, in the 1920’s.  He has many memories of Pittsburgh, and had stayed at the same hotel I was in this week, the elegant William Penn.  Built in 1919, it has likely seen other relatives over the years…like my grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Rutan, when she would take the train north for shopping excursions at the old Kauffmann’s (now Macy’s, right up the street), or grandfather Harmon Samuel McKee, working one of his first jobs for the Heinz Company.

It’s good to be in a place sometimes where you can see your history all around you- it seems to me to more fully fill out a sense of identity.  Thanks, Pittsburgh.

Those are the miles that separate us (Duke) from them (UNC), and tomorrow is the big game.  I’ll watch, but I won’t be thinking about it in the same way that I usually do.

Rest in peace, Eve Carson, Student Government President of the University of North Carolina.  May justice come for your death, and may all of us remember tomorrow that these two great schools are about fine people like you.

I was reading an article about the development of a little known street in New York City- Centre Market Place.  It is wedged down in the southeast corner of the island, very close to lots of places like Greenwich Village, Chinatown, and the Lower East Side (it gets classified in some neighborhood, but I didn’t bother to see which one).  Cartophile that I am, I had to look it up right away, and a memory came flooding back to me as I saw the location, just five blocks to the west of Sara Roosevelt Park.

I know this park well; far better, in fact, than I wish I did.  I know it because I was feeling hopelessly lost in that vicinity on my second trip to NYC.  A friend who lives in Philadelphia had directed me on how to get back to Philly on my own after we parted ways the day before- we had come over together on the always-an-adventure “Chinatown Bus”.  It seemed simple enough- all I had to do was find this little stretch of street in Chinatown by 8 p.m., the time that the bus was set to depart.  I had a card with the address and a small map printed on it, and I was confindent in my ability to get there.

What I hadn’t bargained for was the city at night.  How disorienting darkness can be, even when we are somewhat familiar with the area- I should have remembered well a similar experience in London when I was a college student but, you know, things fade.  And so that night, as I circled the same block more than once, signs for Sara Roosevelt Park kept coming into view, as did the concrete rectangular space itself.  The lighting was dim, the looming Manhattan Bridge to the immediate southeast was imposing, and the thought of my spending another night in the city took on an air of inevitability.

However, I do like a challenge, so I made one last desperate attempt at escape.  I found a nearby busy street (Houston?  Delancy?) and tried to hail a cab.  This being rush hour for New Yorkers, I was competing with lots of others for those yellow prizes, but I was fueled by my desire to not spend another $200 to sleep in this town.  I practically threw myself into the path of a Honda Odyssey Yellow Cab, but he stopped.  Child of the world that I believe myself to be, I appreciate, but cannot understand, all languages- my cabbie and I had this in common, for he spoke an African language and I spoke English.  I showed him my map/Chinatown Bus business card, and he called a dispatcher (perhaps he could read better than he could speak…or else he just didn’t want to talk to me).  I sat back, anxious but hopeful, as we sped by neon signs and paper lanterns.  To my great relief, we suddenly came upon that familiar corner near the dim sum place where I’d had lunch with my friend the day before…and that lovely hulking tour bus was right where it was supposed to be, as was the diminutive lady shouting, “Philadelphia!”  We made it, with minutes to spare.

My first, but not last, New York adventure- just one morereason why I love that place

Here’s my bias, obvious by now…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghSJsEVf0pU

This is the view from my front window, and it never looked better than when I took this photograph earlier this week.  A lovely little Lutheran church.  Though I am a minister, and though I live right across the street, this is not my church- seems odd, I know.  However, because I have become friends with this pastor and congregation, I am invited from time to time to fill the pulpit when their minister must be away.  Today was just such a day.

When I walk out of the door of a parish like this one, I am often left asking myself questions about vocation.  Is chaplaincy (the mode of ministry I currently embrace) my future, or might I someday see myself as a parish pastor?  I used to tell people “never”, and tell them quite unequivocally.  But then I find that I am immersed in the beautiful mystery of the sacramental moment when I bend toward the worshipper at the communion rail, and I wonder.  I touch the top of the head of a child who has come forward with her parent, a child eager for that instant of blessing- I am thanked with a smile, and I wonder.  And as I walk from the narthex back to the study after the service, and I see a table set with donut parts and apple juice (a table that is set just this way everytime I am there, ready for grazing adults and children), I wonder, because I know that this is the stuff of which memory is made.  Sacred memory, at the intersection where God and people meet.  It is hard for a minister not to want to be in the midst of such a place.

I pay much more attention now- it took travelling thousands of miles to get me to this point, but it’s the truth. When I see a headline, a picture, a red news alert that refers to Israeli and Palestinian relations, my attention is held fast. Should I have cared like this sooner? Yes- but I can’t deny that, at least for me, a sense of place makes a difference. A long time ago I was taught to think of myself as a world citizen but I still gravitate toward the countries where I’ve been more than others. Obviously I care about my native land, the United States of America, but Mexico and Canada matter to me too, as do India, Pakistan, China. My mind is still crowded with images of those places, snapshots that line up alongside of Austria, Germany, England, Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea…and, now, Israel/Palestine, with a nod to what I could see of Jordan, just over the border.

When I saw the slideshow today on the msnbc.com site (I recommend checking it out), I saw pain on both sides of the walls that have been built. For every grieving Palestinian mother, there is an equally raw Israeli father; there is a hole from a rocket in the roof of an apartment in Israel, and there is a wall blown away in a domicile in a Palestinian settlement. Trading blows, exchanging angry, violent messages is now a daily practice. Had this happened a couple of months earlier, I may not have been able to travel there at all…I would likely not care as much as I do today.

What do I do from here? Ten days of presence certainly doesn’t qualify me as any kind of expert, it only grants me a smidgen of increased understanding. For now perhaps that is enough, for understanding can breed compassion, education, and conversation, and understanding can be the seed of greater prayer for peace. Let it be so.