The two World Trade Center memorials, two blocks apart.

The truth is that I had no words this morning and I am still at a loss.

So, I will let William Collins speak for me. This isn't the first time I've referred to this poem, How Sleep the Brave. Same sentiment fits.

HOW sleep the brave, who sink to rest
By all their country's wishes blest!
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallow'd mould,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod	5
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.
By fairy hands their knell is rung;
By forms unseen their dirge is sung;
There Honour comes, a pilgrim grey,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay;	10
And Freedom shall awhile repair
To dwell, a weeping hermit, there!

I wandered into the little church next to the 9-11 memorial. You know me, I like old cemeteries and this one had some from before the Revolutionary War. The church was open, so I wandered in there as well. I wasn't prepared for what I saw. This was the closest aid station for first responders and was open day and night for the year they were doing rescue and recovery, and then debris removal. They have collected everything from that year and it is on display. This is where the first responders from all over the country slept. The church pews are pocked with scratches and worn paint from boots and gear they were too tired to shuck off. This is where, like the rest of us, they began to grieve for the dead. Only they did theirs while working 12 hour shifts looking for the missing or pulling wreckage from the site. This is where the church staff, as well as their congregation, served these men and women by providing water, food, clothing, pillow and blankets. They sat with the first responders as they wrestled with their loss and the emotion torture their work had to have been. The humbly served and sat beside and prayer with. 

The next time I talk about the church being Christ in the community, the model I'll think of from here on out is St. Paul's.

As usual, I'm using my iPad to compose and so will fix the photos and add a couple hyperlinks when I get a chance.

Lunch With Luetze

Its lunchtime at the Met conference and I grabbed a hotdog and ste it on the Met steps. Quintessential New York moment.

I have wandered back into the American Wing. One of the paintings I've always wanted to see in person was Emmanuel Luetze's Washingtin Crossing the Delaware. We just spent two hours with it and a dozen or so paintings. I came back in my own. 

Good lunch.

Searching for 'Searching For Bobby Fisher' locales

This façade sits right in front of the entrance to the dorms. I'm not sure what it is but I will find out.

So, I made it to New York this afternoon and just walked back from the a dinner with all the participants. Its kinda weird to meet for the first time, but by the end of dinner, the teacher chat is in full swing. I ate dinner with a teacher from Chicago and Dallas. The two professors were at my table as well so there was adult supervision. We ate at Trece. Wow. Order the fish tacos! The orange colored dipping sauce is really hot, but really good. Like 'looking for other stuff to dip it in' good.I even ate guacamole- and I liked it.

 

The building behind this façade is where I am living for the next week.

This afternoon, I wandered over to Washington Square Park. It is one of the places I wanted to see in the city. It has a history that is fascinating. You can read that here. One of the reasons I wanted to see the park is because of a movie. Searching for Bobby Fisher. It is one of my favorite movies. Period. Washington Park is an important part of the story. Here is the trailer for the movie.

 

 

I stood there and watched folks in the park. Hundreds of people. Playing chess. Playing in the fountain. Enjoying music and chalk art.

I didn't take any pictures of chess players because, unless you push in, all you see are blobs of people around a table. These folks looked serious so I chickened out.

 

 

I also wandered into Strand Books just up the street. 18 miles of books. Six separate sections on history. We'll need to revisit that little jewel. Its less than two blocks from the dorms.

 

 

Thoughts after Atlanta...trafficking, hunger and being 'bottom stuck'

These past few days back from mission trip has gotten me thinking, and that is always dangerous.

As I think back on Atlanta, I keep going back to experiences I've had in and out of the classroom the last few years. Atlanta connected several things that I had kinda kept separate.

The first was human trafficking. We gave out sandwiches on the block with the highest ratio of human trafficking in the southeast. At Lincoln's Cottage, they had a exhibit on human trafficking. The video in the exhibit featured a young lady from Wichita. An organization named Slavery Footprint helps shine a light on the how what we consume is connected to trafficking.

I wrote about it in a post a couple years ago. Wrote about it here, too.

Another was hunger. The sandwich, fruit, chips, cookie and drink we offered were the only meal many of those people in Atlanta would have that day. What floored me was most of them wanted to talk with us and pray with us more than the food. That is a community hungry for compassion and connection. That made me think about something we did in 7th grade World History a couple years ago. We did a hunger banquet and watched a movie about food waste called Dive!

I wrote a post about it here.

What is interesting is that this year, the seventh grade team is hoping to initiate a food waste program with the students this coming school year. We are using the movie as a jumping off point. Atlanta made food waste real for me in a way it hadn't. US grocers throw away almost half of their fresh produce and meat every day. It isn't rotten, just past the 'shelf life.' That food could be used in a better manner. I met people last week who could use that food.

The last idea it has been connecting me to is this idea of poverty and being 'bottom stuck'. This idea comes from a documentary, Traces of the Trade, about the Northern profits from the slave trade and reparations. An economist talks about the bottom stuck as those who will never benefit in the same way from the advances other African Americans have been able to make.  They are in a cycle of poverty that started with slavery, continued under Jim Crow and continues today. The thing about pulling yourself up by your boots straps--its requires you to have boots in the first place. We can rant about a welfare state, and I'm still Madisonian in my love of limited government, but there are people who need our help. I met some of them last week. They became real to me. How becomes the real question.

As I said, these are things I'm thinking on...still trying to figure out next steps.

Will keep you posted. dm

Finding God at mach speed and with The King of Rock and Roll

The breakfast and cleaning is done and now we are loading up before worship here in Little Rock. (Clearly, other people are working much harder than me. I should do something about that.) 

As promised, photos from Six Flags Over Atlanta. I've thrown in our stop to the Elvis Presley Birthplace Site and Museum as well. I think you'll be able to tell one from the other. Hint: there isn't an outhouse ride at Six Flags.

Finding God in a Dreaming Icon

We are cleaning up in preparation for worship at Second Prebyterian, Little Rock. I thought it appropriate in the home town of the Little Rock Nine to post photos of the trip to the MLK Historic Site. It was a place where my person of faith and person of history converged.

Finding God with wet feet

Well, it's midnight again. I'm on lights out patrol. A days drive from home. I haven't posted in a couple days. We've been busy. Thursday was a normal day until early afternoon. A raft of God moments, but I'm gonna let those marinate for a bit. The afternoon was a trip to the Martin Luther King, Jr. historic Site. It was something I was probably more excited for that the kids. They graciously indulged. It didn't disappoint. I'll post pictures in a separate post.

Friday was a free day and we spent it at Six Flags. Three wooden rollercoasters, twice on Goliath and a few more smaller ones reminded me that it's not 1979 anymore. It's not even 1989 anymore. Again I'll post pictures later. 

Friday evening is Senior Night. It was a high point for me. Grant and Bryson are phenomenal young men. I was honored to have them lead us in worship. As I prayed that evening I started composing. It is how my brain and spirit process. Again, raw form. But raw isn't a bad thing.
 

The circle

I'm sitting in a circle.

A circle of little puddles and awkward silences.

A tradition older than most of its adherents.

Amy Grant and Green Day serenade the circle and I wait.

I wait and I pray. 

I wait and think on the past week.

A week of moments.

Miles and hours from home in an alien place.

Alien and exactly home.

Home has been a wrestling point;

between God and his Jacob.

We know how this ends, don't we?

The idea has been so clear for so long.

And now it isn't.

Tina and Anderson have shattered it.

The original idea seems so little; so human.

Gods loves this little cat and mouse-

...But it's my turn.

The ancient rituals played out;

This time on this place's red hills.

No girding of loins.

But everything else exactly as it has been.

Basin and towel. 

The upper room replaced by halogens and this makeshift circle.

The act is secondary to the voices.

Voices for whom this act is profound-central to their week.

Voices who make my soul gasp.

Gasp in awe and pride.

Tears are acceptable, but I don't want them to come.

I want to soak these seconds in without blubbing.

I am surprised by what I hear.

Humbled. Inspired. Honored.

-My time is done and I've survived unwept.

Their voices dim as the exhortations pass;

from one chair to the next as the fragrance travels with them.

My thoughts move back to home

But a hearth is replaced by an overpass.

And a Rose of Sharon replaces

the burnt out shell of a house on the wrong side of the tracks and of hope.

The flower, though, reminds of a truth as old as the ritual.

Both Hope and it's Namesake,

they're very much on the wrong side.

They never left; you just have to be patient, wait, look and listen.

They never left the circle.

Never.

The circle isn't about burnt out timbers or "lunches and Jesus!"

It is, but there's more to it than that.

The circle is about submission.

Home is about a safe place.

Or is it the other way around?

Either way, I suppose.

The circle has become home.

A holy sense of humor continues its little scavenger hunt.

A hunt for truth from Truth.

Truth, Hope and it's Namesake revel in the destruction of silly notions.

The circle isn't done.

The ritual is its closing act tonight, 

but it's as much a ritual of beginnings as ends.

Circles don't end, do they?

We'll leave the circle and take these moment home soon.

To beds uninflated, but lives just as tenuous.

There, but for the grace of God, the adage goes.

The adage is Truth.

I'm sitting in a circle.

My thoughts are here;

but so is the Namesake, Hope, Truth and Grace.

They'll travel with me,

They'll travel with me,

to a home rethought and back under holy reconstruction.

Cat and mouse reconstruction may take awhile.

But Patience joins the builders.

It's a fan of circles, too.