UpfromtheStump - Archive 51

11 January 2009 8:07pm

After dinner on Thursdays a group of folks meet in a parking lot down the street and begin walking the neighborhood. They call it prayerwalking. The pervasive broken area is viewed, current and head on, each prayer directed like an arrow at each of what needs it. An abandoned lot is filled with trash and rubble, and it is prayed to become good, perhaps a house with a family. A store is standing tired, empty and boarded up, and on its behalf it is held up to God for the promise of what it could become. The level need is met by the level of the petition. A homeless addict, a wandering child, an abandoned car, an empty apartment complex: these things are broken versions of what they should be. And we don't fool ourselves to think human hands have the ability to bring such reversal to our world. No, the depravity is to such a depth that only a god could save this. And us with it.

So we prayed for the depravity, we walked the broken streets of Paterson and held things to God's attention, asking and wrestling with him that these things would be given vitality and radiance. And I felt afterward that everything seemed to gain luster. Well, not everything. Not the sources of the bad. The endless liquor stores are asked to end like a stubborn flu. "May these businesses fail, God," we prayed. "May the poison which saturates this neighborhood drain down the gutter. Let it take the ragged bags with it, the food wrappers and the threadbare car tires. Restore this city's industry to health."

A liquor store on Martin Luther King Blvd was hosting a group of men that night. We stood with those willing and we altogether asked God for life and fullness. A man who had set down his can of malt liquor to pray had suddenly begun to weep, his tears mixing with the glistening salted pavement. His voice broke when it came his turn, broke as he said he was 'sorry' and that he'll 'try harder next time', broke like the streets and the houses and the very air we were breathing.

Please God. I am torn in two by the good hearts of such people, good hearts sore from the merciless circumstances where they live. If such a person can be righted then surely such a terrific work of balance could not come through any work of mine.

6 January 2009 5:19pm

At the 8th Ave and 50th Street subway stop in Manhattan, both the C and E trains head downtown. I was headed in that direction, but I saw that the two trains arrived on different platforms. The E platform is actually down the stairs from the C platform. But since both trains go to Pennsylvania station, I was confused about where to wait.

Many people were going downtown like me, waiting near the rusted steps on the top level. Nobody was crowded around the platform like normal, everybody was set back a ways. And I looked and immediately saw that they were standing and waiting for whatever train was coming first.

A distant murmur soon began to emanate from the tunnels. It was too obscure though. It had too little definition. It made my hand buzz slightly on the rail, stirring the air to reverberate like a pipe organ chord, throwing itself lightly from wall to wall. The sound grew in volume, but still I didn't know where to move. Nobody moved. Steadily the murmur grew into a rumble, and for sure I knew then that a train was coming either to the upper or lower platform. The air thundered with the approaching train, absolutely shook the ground and air and walls, making the station like the inside of a boiling kettle, and still I couldn't tell anything as to its source. The train seemed at times like it would come from the rusted ceiling, or like it was about to crash through the gummy floor under my feet.

A girl in front of me moved first. She was closer to the lower level than others, which maybe helped. I bet she had done this before. I saw her lean and begin to walk down the rest of the stairs, where she turned left and disappeared into the corridor that leads to the lower E train platform. Others, like the girl, seemed able to pick the roar coming more from the lower area, seemed to differentiate it from the roaring rest of the station. They started down and everybody followed them. I couldn't tell it still, even when I began to walk after them. To me, it was all still like static.

Sure enough, the E train screeched heavy into the lower level. We got on, the doors shut, and I took it two stops to Penn Station on 31st Street on my way back to Paterson. But the image of all those tired evening commuters stayed like an ember in my mind, how they stood between the platforms, picking out the noise of the approaching train from the noise of the approaching train.

1 January 2009 10:23pm

I am living in northern New Jersey with a bunch of wonderful guys who are recovering from drug and alcohol addictions. They've all been clean for at least nine months, and you can tell. Right away I saw the kind of confidence in their eyes that only comes from deep seated accomplishment. They were so genuine in their posture when they helped me unload my bags. They were tried and real, truly interested in where I had driven from, where I had lived, and how long I was going to stay. I was talking with one of them, and came to the sudden realization that he was super intelligent. Assumptions are so ridiculous sometimes, like that only real thick skulled guys would get addicted to stuff. Shows what I know.

As my new housemate took my suitcase and brought it inside, as he commented on the weather and the room I was in, I saw a razor level of perception in his eyes. May my assumptions burn in flame. He was brisk footed and quick talking, and I knew he must have hoards of stories about surviving wherever he came from, whatever street it was where he was forced to survive through witted dexterity. And I realized I was going to get near nothing past him or any of the other guys in this house.

27 December 2008 11:38am

The ebb and flow of the human heart is bewildering at times. Who can keep up? Who can stay on top of this turvy thing. With the smallest prick of difficulty, the slightest lost expectation, and we can be sent reeling. A stormy day for instance colors our world gloomy. The sheets of liquid lash the house sides and tired trees, the air sputters and turns to slog everything it touches. The weather is outside; we go shuttered inside.

We are waiting.

And all at once the sun stoops below the heavy cloudline. Its rayed royalty comes down to our level. And when this happens, the difficult drizz is revealed in all its gorgeous painted symmetry. All at once, the gloom is given a revelation that we can more easily carry. The exact same situation, nothing different, and yet we suddenly can't get pull our eyes away. We take deeper breathes. All we know and walk through is transformed as something wonderful. All. And now I have a hard time remembering how dreary it was before.

So much is like this.

16 December 2008 7:21pm

Our neighbor's husband died three years ago. A month ago she was in our house, laughing and making jokes. And she was hilarious, especially considering such stuff was coming from a sixty year old woman. But then her face pulled serious. She asked us for just a couple dollars. We instead asked if she wanted some of our dinner we were making. She politely refused, laughed some more, and left.

Her husband's death wears on her still. I could faintly see something was broken behind her comedy, because whenever the joke was over (and just before she said another word) her face was stuck fierce, just for a moment. One of my housemates said he went over to her house earlier that week and found her alone and drunk on whiskey, wanting to talk about her husband.

Sometimes I get so furious at myself for how I underscore the plight of the widow, as if its like any other problem. But I was sobered by her struggle that night, in between her wonderful humor, bent in half from the grief, and begging for escape. I saw an aged and unyielding anguish, like a broken bone that won't heal. Like arrhythmia.

God, be with the widow this frigid December evening.

14 December 2008 4:01pm

I dreamed two nights ago that I was trying to get into a multi masted schooner that was leaving for across the ocean. The water was deep and blue, the wind light, and I jumped in the water as it was leaving, fighting to catch up. I remember how it was on the lip of the horizon, how its squared aft slowly sank sickly over and beyond my sight. I was swimming after it so hard, and was panicking that it had truly floated beyond me, that I was stuck in the middle of the vast expanse of liquid alone and distraught. I slumped down.

Then I saw through the water, deep below and before me, a blue giant whale with a large tail, slowly moving in the same direction as the schooner. It was less swift than the ship, and I kept my face down in the water and swam after it, and it stayed in my sight, staying with me. I swam for hours and the blue fish swam strong and peaceful, deep below me. The only noise over the ocean expanse was my own swimming strokes, and I began to calm down. And the whale led me across that entire ocean, and I bumped my head against the other side. It startled me, and I woke up minutes before my alarm.

How bewildering are these days, trying to live again in this manic society, trying hard to make appointments and turn forms in on time. I feel anxiety has finally become real to me, more than anytime before. But through it all, God is with this effort, and creating the trail I am walking. As I move from that shore to this new one, he has me in his sight, in his steady wake, and I have only to move my feet. Its all I can do at this moment anyways.