Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold (Part Two)

Eventually we came to a determined creek that somehow seeped into the air its intense frigidness. We surveyed the water body, looked at each other, and decided to use a small outcropping of growth – a shrub, really – growing from our own bank to swing across to the other side. Was it a foolish plan? I’m not sure. All I know is that I watched my three companions make the crossing, seeing with terrible alertness the rescue-shrub become more and more disentangled from its rooted position as each man dared the attempt. Finally I stood up to cross. I grasped the shrub, felt its shakiness, and tried to silently convey my trust in it, as any man might make a gesture of solidarity to someone who stood ready to lend a hand. But my trust was shattered. As I used the shrub to propel myself across the creek, I never made it; the plant came completely uprooted, the bit of muddy bank underfoot crumbled away, and I awkwardly half-plunged into the freezing creekwater. Thankfully I was only half-submerged, and my friends rushed to pull me out.

            To this day, I have never experienced a more intense or frightening coldness. The one side of my body that touched the river’s surface was moving from shocked numbness to a deep and purposeful aching. Trying desperately to forget any story I’d heard about hypothermia, we trudged down the last bit of the trail, making one more river crossing and finally arriving at the promised land. That lean-to was beautiful. I immediately peeled off my drenched clothes, stripping down to my long-johns and an Irish fisherman’s sweater my parents had recently given me as a gift. As my friends hurried to make a fire I immersed myself in layers of sleeping-bag to prevent my body from succumbing to the cold. The fire we built that night was a magnificently raging inferno, and completely illegal, as campers were not supposed to make fires so close to the wooden structure of the lean-tos. One of us voiced this concern, but James stated that he didn’t care; it had been a long, cold, painful journey into that valley, and he was going to make as big a fire as his imagination and foraging skills would allow. The fire was indeed large, and as it warmed our aching bones and feeling slowly returned to my body, we shared stories, read Scripture, and dined on canned Haggis (it’s a strange Scottish dish – look it up) and mashed potatoes, the hardiest food we brought with us.

            We also found an open journal in the lean-to, which was a sort of record or log to which any camper staying there could add their own story. We read through the various accounts and entries that dated back several years, the most memorable ones involving two park rangers searching for a missing person on the trails, a man hiking joyfully with his dog, and two lovers on a honeymoon. We obligingly added our own entry to the ongoing chronicle, and I wonder if perhaps that book still lies dusty and dark in the belly of the gorge. Just before bed we each took a nightcap of whiskey to warm us and lull us to sleep. We were unconscious within minutes.

            The next morning we awoke and prayed together, giving thanks for our deliverance the previous night and beseeching the Lord’s blessing on that day’s endeavors (as was our routine). I’m pleased to say that the morning hike out of the gorge was much easier than the descent, even downright enjoyable. I’m not sure how this was possible, and perhaps it was a divine gift, but our spirits lifted as we climbed up the cold snowy banks. The sun had still not emerged and it appeared an even mistier day than the day before. We rested at Lake Tear of the Clouds, the very spot where then-vice president Theodore Roosevelt, out for a manly hike as he was wont to do, learned that William McKinley would not survive his gunshot wounds. We sat and ate Wilbur Buds (chocolate fragments of paradise – again, look them up), looking out on the dreary swamp and musing on this historical moment.

            The descent back down to the main trailhead was fraught with peril due again to the unpredictable snowdrifts: the path itself had shrunk to a snow bridge barely two feet in width, with sheer walls plummeting down either side. The trail twisted lazily around and around, and we moved with slow deliberateness. As the snow gradually faded into blessed stony earth, we practically bounded down the mountain and sang old hymns at the top of our lungs.

            We crossed Marcy Dam again, treating it like an old friend. Our last night of camping was bittersweet, as we knew the adventure would be at an end soon. In celebration we cooked (in my opinion) our classiest meal: salmon with wild rice. As men tend to do when bound together in adversity, surrounded by God’s good earth on all sides with no whisper of civilization beyond the roaring dam in the distance, we shared with one another our hopes and fears; we laughed and talked and prayed. After all, following this journey we would all be going our separate ways, embarking upon the far scarier journey of becoming men in the world, no longer Grove City College students. I remember feeling stripped to an emotional core, because there was nothing else to distract me. I would be leaving these men for some time, leaving behind their fellowship and companionship. We tried to enjoy these moments, alone as men with the Lord feeling close amid the trees and the wild of the evening.

On the following morning we found the hike out to be surprisingly brief, and before we knew it we were arriving at the old Ford Explorer, drenched in sweat. It was still very early in the morning, so we drove into a small town in the valley (I forget its name) and had homemade apple pie at the local diner. I tell you that pie was heavenly.

            I don’t remember much of the drive home, only that I was desperately looking forward to the showers and hot food awaiting us at the Hayward Homestead. Mr. and Mrs. Hayward are some of the most generous and hospitable people I know (they’ve welcomed me into their home and fed me many times), and they were in particularly fine form this occasion. We had one more day together, my friends and I, and we spent it at the Hayward house engaging in all types of joyous play (furious swimming pool basketball, Frisbee golf, backyard baseball, and hours of boardgames) as well as bountiful belt-loosening meals at the dining room table.

            Then, almost as soon as it had began, it was all over. I was driving back home through the pleasant thoroughfare that is Route 30, through the small towns of Lancaster County and over farmland back to West Chester. But still lingering, if not immediately in the rearview mirror, then at least in the twin lands of heart and memory that towering peak, enfolded in cloud. The land belongs to the Lord, and we belong to the Lord, and the story of our fellowship on the long and crooked road through springtime snowy trails, across shivering rivers, and beneath the mighty boughs belongs to each of us. It was a great adventure, my lads, a great adventure.

Here ends my written account; some of the details have not made it here, or have arrived in some different fashion from the true story, because the truest memories live within me, and will there continue to grow and mature with me, until perhaps I sit down with a grandchild on the knee and tell this story again in full. Until then, the story goes with me from this juncture on, until the Day of the Lord.

           

            

Thoughts on the Brave New World

Dr. Michio Kaku, a popular Theoretical Physicist from the City University of New York, remarked in a May 2011 interview that the human society on planet Earth was steadily progressing from a “Type Zero Civilization” – the old world of tribal, sectarian conflict embroiled in war because of cultural barriers – to a “Type One Civilization”: a globally integrated, “multicultural, scientific, tolerant society.” If we can communicate with someone across the world in an instant, initiate trans-national economic programs such as the European Union, and speak a near-global language (English), then Kaku believes we are on our way to a truly global society – in his mind, a scientific utopia in which rationality and tolerance trumps the bitter exclusivity of religion, and war becomes but a memory.

            At first glance it’s difficult to determine the proper reaction to this revelation: should we be filled with hope for a potential future in which everything that marked the human race as fallen – conflict, strife, corruption, greed, vanity – could be eradicated in a completely transformative scientific revolution? Or should we be troubled at the thought of man’s brilliance unleashed, determined to “fix” the world? I suppose it depends on the sort of tools required for such a task.

            It is a question as old as the human conscience, as old as the ability to peer beyond ourselves and see that something is wrong with the state of things. Perhaps we were too content in our old world of savagery and passion – perhaps we were not determined enough, like the brightest scientists of the modern age, to not only understand the workings of the world but also seek to improve it. Perhaps even when the course of human existence was changed in the moment of the Incarnation, when the one true God became flesh, we were not yet disturbed or moved enough to change things. But that would be operating under the assumption that man, in all his ambition and brilliance, can endeavor to change the human condition.

            In accordance with the online knowledge forum Big Think, several scientists were asked to envision a world without religion. Robert Wright, author of Evolution of God, offered that the moral progress “required to save the world” could exist without religion, but was quick to say that the perfect society need not shed religious ideas per se – merely that any religion allowed to exist must be perfectly tolerant of other beliefs. The famed evolutionary biologist (and self-avowed enemy of religion) Richard Dawkins commented, in his customarily sardonic way, that in the godless world “we could get on with our science as science and not have to worry about whether we are giving offense to people who get their beliefs from holy books rather than from evidence.” Dawkins also pointed out that our public discourse would move away from anything dependent upon absolutist criteria, but rather those criteria that are based on suffering. This latter idea is not a pleasant one, particularly if it indicates a movement away from an absolute moral code. Nevertheless, Dawkins perceives this movement not as an abolition of morality, but rather a redefinition.

            According to these brilliant men, we could still achieve a healthy and moral world should the dangerous evils of Islam, Christianity, and other world religions happen to fall away. In fact, according to Kaku we might even have a better shot at it were all the cultural barriers to disintegrate. If only the human race could rally together and forget those things that divide us; if only we could be like the truly enlightened men who understand the inevitable triumph of scientific reasoning. Of course, it only takes a single person to reject the utopian philosophy and embrace his own, to make himself a god over other men, for the system to fall into chaos. We need only look to such individuals – Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, and countless others – who have proven the incurable illness in man’s soul.

In listening to the theoretical musings of the world’s smartest men, I sometimes feel as if I had fallen backwards in time, rather than forwards. It would appear that we are trying to recapture the philosophy of the Enlightenment – that man is the undisputed master and corrector of his world, capable of self-perfection. And what of the philosophical shifts that occurred in that movement’s wake? The rational naturalists gave way to the Romantics, who wrestled with the heart as well as the head, who began to observe a beauty in the world and a tragedy in the human spirit. The rise of Industrialism gave us hope in the machine, and a chance at betterment at progress – until the machine was twisted into weaponry and used to slaughter men. Since the rise and fall of our two great wars and the ruinous aftermath, we are still locked in philosophical struggle to understand why, in the words of Dr. Janusz Bardach, “man is wolf to man.” Were we to deny the crippled state of man’s conscience, of his inexplicable aversion to the moral, his amazing capacity to abuse his own life and the lives of others, or his clinging to hatred and rejection of compassion, we would become fools indeed. But then again, “Has God not made foolish the wisdom of this world?” (1 Cor. 1:20).

As the believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have a distinct advantage. We know that man’s condition is not that of the material which the enlightened have endeavored to mend, but that of a spiritual fabric unraveled and unworthy before the Holy God. Not only this, but we know the one true cure, the one thing that fixes the broken man and makes him whole. This beautiful knowledge is no secret to us, though it may be a mystery, and we are not burdened but rather privileged with the task of setting it loose upon the world. Perhaps this issue, like all other issues of the earth, comes back to faith – do we believe that God can fix man’s condition? Perhaps we will never see the laying down of arms in the world of men, but we are promised that sight in the Kingdom of God. That is a braver, newer, and more wonderful world than we could ever hope to imagine.

Worth Fighting For: The Secular Case for Evangelism

For those friends of mine reading this that don’t know, I am a Christian – and each of you have a different conception of what exactly that means. For my own part, I don’t just mean I belong to a global community or sociological people group that identifies itself on government forms and standardized tests as “Christian” – though I do mean that in part. What I really believe is something far more radical and, perhaps, harder and more offensive to accept: I believe I am a child of the One True God, purchased in death and reconciled in life to a glorious destiny by the Son of God, and therefore born again of the Spirit of God. My faith meets at the nexus of two planes – an ineffable sense of the Love that built the world and somehow saves a soul, and the concrete knowledge of a God who entered history, in a specific time and specific place, who laughed and wept and prayed, whose feet felt the dust of Canaan and whose blood really did trickle down a cross, changing the world for all time. 


 I believe these things. You may look at them now and either agree wholeheartedly, or perhaps shake your head in skepticism – but in either case, we can understand each other. You can demand of me a proof that will obliterate any shadow of doubt; you can demand of me an explanation for the tragedies committed in the name of so-called “religion”; you can demand of me a real, no B.S. answer about why an intelligent, rational human being should believe that an old dusty book is the unassailable Word of God; but the one thing you cannot demand of me is that I shut up and let everyone just believe what they want to believe. 


 I don’t think I’m being unreasonable in this refusal to stay quiet, and I don’t think that refusal grants you the ammunition to assail my character. This is something that has bothered me for quite some time. As a man who identifies himself as a Christian, I spend most of my day interacting with those who don’t share my beliefs. This fact doesn’t surprise me; I was taught in early youth to recognize a world that mostly disagrees with me. Still, even as a young man I have heard one criticism of my faith more than any other, and it goes something like this: “The problem with Christians is that they’re always trying to shove their beliefs down everyone’s throats. Why can’t they just keep to themselves, practice their beliefs quietly, and let other people worship their own way? Why can’t they accept that their religion isn’t the only right one, and that all religions are just trying to get at their own forms of truth? The world would be a much more peaceful place.”


There’s a reason why Christians are always trying to “force” their beliefs on others (though we really shouldn’t use that word, because to most people “force” really means “asking if they know about Jesus” or “handing out pamphlets on the street”), and it derives from a character quality that most of the world, atheists and agnostics included, normally admire: compassion for others. If I really believe with sincere devotion that we are setting fire to a world built upon perfect justice and are destined to reap every last twisted sewing – if I told you there was a chance of being healed, of being finally cleansed of pain and heartache, of rediscovering true joy and the perfect homestead we once abandoned – if I believe this is the truth, and yet say nothing, what sort of person am I? The man who knows a way to help his friends but turns away out of pride, or fear of rejection? 


 But that’s so arrogant and condescending of you, claiming you’re trying to save me because you know the “real” truth. How does telling me I’m not merely wrong, but also ignorant, really help me? Why do I have to drop everything and give my life completely to a religion in order to find happiness? Why can’t you just accept me the way I am? These are all valid questions, and you’re right to ask them. But don’t you see, it doesn’t matter if you think that I’m wrong, that Jesus never really existed and he certainly didn’t “die for your sins.” Even if I am wrong, you can’t begrudge me the fact that I loved you enough to try and articulate to you something I earnestly believe. If I’ve done anything to earn your respect, at least permit me to offer you a taste of the draught that saved me, pulled me from the depths, and restored me to life. If I’m an earnest believer, you should see the change in me anyway. Don’t begrudge me the chance to explain why. 


 This doesn’t stop with Christianity. Any man who has given himself over to an ideal – be it something particular like the love of a woman or devotion to country, or something abstract like Freedom or Truth or Human Rights – cannot be faulted for shouting his ideas from the rooftops or from the platform at a protest. He cannot be called intolerant or proud for giving his life on the field of battle, or staring down the barrel of a gun in the name of his beliefs. If every religious devotee or political idealist just kept to himself, we would live in a world much sadder and darker than it already is. Even if you think there is no objective Truth, you must still respect the idea of Truth enough to accept those who live and breathe and die by a Truth they hold to be sacred. If none of us are prepared to fight or defend or evangelize for the things we believe in, why do we believe? 


 When you can articulate to me a utopian model not grounded on some conception of truth, or bricked and mortared with ideals built by the sweat of true believers, than I will say we have no reason to evangelize. But until then, I am not ashamed to proclaim what I believe to be the truth of the Christian Gospel. It is an idea that has earned men not fame or fortune, but the threat of execution and the cold walls of prison. It is an idea that has changed the world, from the action of social institutions in ending poverty to the changing of one man’s heart in a darkened room, when he had already abandoned hope. It appeals to the humble child and makes children of learned scholars. In short, I believe it to be the truth, one worth fighting for. I don’t believe I condescend when I tell you about it; in reality, I believe you condescend when you accuse me of narrow-mindedness or intolerance or hatred. I am not silent, nor do I retreat into private, inoffensive religiosity, because I still believe in something more important than myself or the shallow niceties of politically-correct company. 


The world is full of radicals, and chances are you agree or at least acknowledge the legitimacy of some of them; why do you reject Christianity's legitimacy out of hand? What has it done to warrant such a dismissal? You might agree with Gandhi: you have no quarrel with Christ Himself, only His followers. You might think the people of the Church are judgmental and hypocritical. True, some of them are; but many more have given their hearts and lives for something they saw to be beautiful and true. Many have spent long nights praying for their apathetic friends, not out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness, but because they honestly love and care for others with a desperate passion. In the end, we are all believers in something; we would be fools to say otherwise. 


 You are all my friends, and I love you. Perhaps you disagree with what I’ve written, and are currently entered into complete and utter rage. If that’s the case, please – let’s talk about it. If you’ve really read all this, and still think that “let’s talk about it” is some covert tactic of mine to try and convert you, then I don’t think you actually read it. So please, the discussion forum is wide open.

Composed Upon Waking

The world is always half asleep
Deep into dreams and lurching into light –
Quartered into struggle with trite affliction,
Inured to fracture of attention.
We never think on life’s dark portion
Spent still in bed and blind
To luminous stars at night,
Deaf to morning birds in song.

And I have wondered upon my waking,
Taking in her sleeping form
That seems a different woman in repose –
Whether she will know me
Or hear the words I whisper in her ear;
I cannot know if she remains the same
As in her waking laughter coy,
Smiles soft and fleeting;
Or whether she will change
When pain comes fresh with the morning.

All this to say that she is gone
When the lids have closed, and breathing slows
Till worlds have crashed in the cool quiet
Of her soul;
She like the child at slumber’s edge
Becomes a creature of peace.
Yet I, in self-loathing longing for her to arise,
In part wishing her to softly dream
And still somehow wait for her stirring –
In yearning for unforgiving sun
And her shutterfly lashes, without burden, to part –
I am then a child of wrath.

An Urban Excursion. Part Two

We entered the Public Library through a small side door, where my bookbag was immediately “searched” (I use this term loosely – she just glanced inside it) by a bored security woman with a voice like chainsaw on gravel. The library itself was magnificent – it reminded me of an ornate temple, carved from solid granite with vaulted ceilings. Our whispers carried far, bouncing around the cavernous rooms. We swept through the cartography room and the scriptorium, then stopped for a while to admire the Rotunda. Here a magnificent depiction of Prometheus graced the ceiling and along the wall Moses condemned the idol-worshippers at the mountain’s foot, his eyes like fire and stone commandments in hand. We peeked into the main reference room, but many people there were actually studying. So we just looked at each other, nodded, and left without a word.

Strangely enough there was a subway right beneath the Library, so we grabbed it and moved speedily underground until we reached Union Square. This time when we emerged from the subway station our noses were greeted by an intoxicating scent: apple cider and cider donuts. We were smack in the middle of a farmer’s market. Honeycrisp apples, various cheeses, local meats, produce, cider, and countless other delicious things. We had to force ourselves to get through it, otherwise we would have lingered too long. Oh well, such is life.

A short walk down the street deposited us at Max Brenner’s, a restaurant built around amazing chocolate dishes. We basically walked in, took in the glorious chocolatey smell, then left. At the end of the block we found Strand’s Bookstore and went in. All three of us – Taylor especially – were suckers for old books. Unfortunately what we found was a city street, with all its crowded craziness and strangeness, packed into this bookstore. The shelves were stacked five high and the ceiling not much higher. I managed to lay hands on a copy of Les Miserables as well as Crime & Punishment, but the suffocating warmth and absurd amount of patrons compelled us to leave.

The sun had set by this time, and we emerged from the bookstore into a lit-up city fully engaged. Another subway ride and we had moved downtown into the Lower Village for dinner, north of Houston Street (pronounced HOW-stun, according to Kris. “A New Yorker will yell at you if you say hewston”). We had read in this tourist book that a certain restaurant called “Comaje” would be a classy and inexpensive place to dine. The place was certainly classy. It was a swanky bistro with no overhead lights, only small candles on the tables. This ambient atmosphere was note-perfect for a romantic date, which was the case for the couple at the table beside us. We felt sort of dressed down and out-of-place in the joint, which apparently showed. We were received very differently by the two waiters that served us (and they were the only staff – this place was about the size of a comfortable bedroom). The one I’ll call Stiffster – he eyed us in a way that made me feel sort of unwelcome, and he just came off as detached and passive. The other I’ll call Mr. Friendly. Like Stiffster he was a young man, but overjoyed that we were able to secure a table (we had traipsed in without a reservation. When we told him this Stiffster looked at us like we had smacked him in the face). Mr. Friendly kept joking around with us and telling us how we were especially cool and that we were “keepers”. My guess is their normal patrons are cold and rude, but this is just conjecture. Friendly even gave us our jasmine tea on the house – which was a good thing, because something went wrong with the making of that tea. Too late to make this long story short, but the food was good and warm and gave us a spring in our step that was much needed. We may be young, but we had already walked a great deal and were exhausted.

And so we embarked on our final subway ride. We sat there and knew we really wanted some Starbucks, but also knew our chances of finding one by the ferry were slim. Just as the subway was stopping Kris suggested we get off then – a few blocks early – and walk the rest of the way to the river in hopes of spotting a Starbucks. This meant we had to make a decision in the two second span that the train doors were open. Our answer was “Yes, let’s get off” but we were too late, for as we stood up from our seats the doors closed on us. We were saddened by this. But then we had a stroke of luck, for some reason the doors opened again for a split second. Kris managed to wedge my bookbag in the door; this caused the door to reopen for one final second. In an impulsive moment we all threw ourselves through the door – Taylor almost getting stuck – as the only other family on the train cheered us on. But we made it through.

After a brief jaunt past Trinity Church, where Taylor was overjoyed to find the actual tomb of Alexander Hamilton, and a short visit to the Wall Street Bull statue, we arrived back at the Staten Island ferry. There we discovered our boat didn’t leave for another half hour. We spent this time wandering the Wall Street area, which was completely deserted. There we stumbled upon a small Vietnam War memorial and a Starbucks which was (predictably) closed.

As we boarded our return ferry and stood on the balcony watching the brilliantly lit New York City skyline retreat into the distance, it seemed a fitting time for reflection, though at the time I could think mostly of a greatly anticipated full night of sleep.

The city is a strange thing. It’s a place of corners, and little nooks begging to be explored; it’s a place where the air is full of smells good and bad – the telltale scent of burgers and fries or the cigarette smoke of a crosswalk-sharer or even just a general “city” smell. There are so many sounds that they all blend into a sort of hum. The voices are many and most have traveled through air or over sea. In some moments you glimpse tragedy – a small girl glumly eating ice cream while her mother sits on the far side of the park bench, smoking her cigarette and staring away with a detached look upon her face; in other places you spy hope and joy, mostly in the children at park playgrounds or a couple leaning on one another in the subway. You see a human people depraved and real and self-focused, but trying to learn even if it’s the wrong way. You find a people of action. Such as those gathered in protest before City Hall, chanting along with voices as one to a woman with a megaphone, their signs and beliefs held aloft; and you find an apathetic generation unwilling to look one another in the eye or cleave to anything beyond their work. And suddenly there you are, returning to your life on the ferry, Lady Liberty glowing in the dark and that giant complex knot of humanity, its glories and struggles, slowly being abstracted into a lite-brite cityscape where there are no people, no problems, only a beautiful vista.

It was a good, long day, all told.

An Urban Excursion. Part One

The Setup: Two friends and I spent a Saturday in New York City. Here follows an account of our experiences.


At 10:30 AM the Staten Island Ferry pulled out onto Hudson Bay. We found ourselves surrounded by languages foreign to our own. Kris could spot the Europeans by their shiny jackets and other clothing – the two standouts were French and German.

Upon landing we made the first trek to South Street Seaport, which lead us under a long overpass. Here’s the thing about New Yorkers, especially the young, trendy ones: they all jog. Tights, iPods, chic sportswear, the works. I stopped counting the runners after fifteen.

At the Seaport itself we encountered a charming and fascinating individual: a nameless woodcutter, early sixties, his hands knobbed and callused from thirty years of honest work, holed up in a ship storage carrier that doubled as his shop. He was very friendly, speaking with a heavy New York accent and earnestly communicating to us his passion. The place was crammed with ornate signs, half-finished ship prows, piles of books and maps and tools. We signed his guestbook, where people from across the world had already put their names. The woodcutter told us he’s encountered many celebrities, and that even Jimmy Carter once paid him a visit. While he spoke to us, an excited Asian tourist who obviously spoke no English ran into the shop, snapped a photo, then dashed out. According to the woodcutter this was a pretty common occurrence.

We climbed the Seaport mall to the promenade that overlooked the Brooklyn Bridge and where once across time Gene Autry and Frank Sinatra sang and danced before a Hollywood camera. The Seaport was a glimpse at the New York City of a simpler past, but it was quickly swallowed by the busy business structures that truly welcomed us to the Big Apple, such as a sleek grey marble Abercrombie & Fitch skyscraper.

St. Paul’s church greeted us next, an old chapel (constructed in the Rococo style according to Kris) oddly situated in the middle of downtown New York City. The small churchyard behind it marked the graves of men and women so ancient the tombstones were illegible. Like so many other parts of the city, St. Paul’s was intimately connected to the 9/11 tragedy and still coping with its strange shadow over the present. In the city’s moment of crisis the church had served as a sanctuary for the rescue workers – and suddenly the small exhibit featuring George Washington’s pew didn’t really matter as much. The murals of old photos, faces of men and women who died, and the written prayers prayed over them gave the old church a greater purpose.

In the place where the Twin Towers once stood is a construction site walled off from the public; not that we necessarily needed to see it, to walk atop the ground itself, but knowing the place is being rebuilt, like the renewed hope of the city’s people, was enough.

A lengthy ride on the Metro spat us out at Central Park East. We bought vendor hot dogs and ate them while sitting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was then that the beautiful weather really struck us. The sky was blue, air cool and crisp; the city was alive but not thrashing or choked with too many bustlers.

We allowed ourselves to be swallowed into the Met. Through the Medieval/Byzantine section (Taylor thought it torturous that we couldn’t linger there for hours) and round the spiffy new “Guitar Heroes” exhibit, we eventually contented ourselves with wandering around the 19th century European and 20th C. Modern sections. Far be it from me to comment on all we saw there, but some of the highlights: Rembrandt, JMW Turner, Van Gogh, Monet. People move quickly though a museum – everyone except the children who are bored and sit on the benches, leaning sleepily on their father’s shoulder while mother patiently studies an original Singer-Sargent on the wall. It is a place where artistic minds flourish, like the older man who sat furiously sketching Carpeaux’s sculpture Ugolino and His Sons. The drawing was beautifully rendered, but one could see he had done it so many times before it was like breathing.

We took a short detour through Central Park. Here a giant statue of Hans Christian Andersen sadly mourned the orphaned children of 9/11 (as Taylor observed); here a lone man in sweats shadowboxes on the hill. The hipsters share the same tranquil park trail as the middle-aged dog walkers and custodians loudly argue with themselves.

After another blurring, screeching subway ride we mounted the slimy stairs into the open air, only to be hit full on with a delicious aroma: street-side kabobs. Kris had been talking these things up all day, so of course we each bought one. The middle-eastern vendor handed me the chicken kabob, smeared with barbecue sauce and skewered on a stick. But wait, there’s more: the whole kabob was then stuffed in a bun too small to accommodate it. I wasn’t sure how to begin eating it, and unthinkingly I voiced this concern aloud.

“Ah, you must go to school for that,” he said in his thick accent with a cheeky grin.

I took a bite of the succulent meat, and saw that it was very good. I told the vendor this.

“Of course,” he replied. “You think I be out here if it was not good? I’d go home!”

After getting a bit turned around and consulting our magic map a few times, we finally came upon Rockefeller Plaza (which is sort of nestled in a spot off the main drag and not immediately noticeable). 30 Rock was massive, touching the sky high above and making me dizzy. The LEGO store certainly awakened my inner child, but it was especially packed with kids and adults alike.

We followed 7th Ave down to Times Square. Looking back on it, I can summarize my thoughts thus: “Here is our culture. Advertisement and overstimulation.” Everything pops brightly, beautiful people fifty feet high loom over you, and everyone, I mean everyone is trying to sell you something, whether it’s the giant face of P. Diddy plugging some cologne or an obnoxious man on the street hounding you.

“What are you doin’ tonight?” one loud, obtrusive spokesman yelled at us. We basically ignored him, to which he responded, “Now y’all are true New Yorkers. You know what you doin’.”

It felt strangely like a fair or something similar because most of Broadway was blocked off to cars, allowing us to wander freely in the street without fear of the speeding yellow death (taxi cab). We slipped into the Times Square Toys R’ Us, which basically looks and feels like a toy magazine and/or commercial blew up, scattering legos and plush dolls and strange novelties every which way. Here we encountered Spider-Man (who I suspect was just an actor), an enormous T-Rex and Optimus Prime. Kris bought two of these collectible mini LEGO figurines, which accounted for half of our collective purchases of the day.

Next we trekked to Bryant Park, a small square behind the regal, granite-carved Public Library. Here ping-pong tables sat in the open air, people wheeled and careened about on the public ice rink, and preteen boys sold Welch’s fruit snacks out of a box. Kris began to assemble his LEGO figurines on a small open-air café table while I watched two European women try to take a picture of one another in front of the ice rink. I was amazed that people would snap photos of rather mundane things – corner coffee shops and law offices and the like – just as often as the well known landmarks. The foreigners were determined to get the full NYC experience, and so they aimed their cameras not only high aloft to capture the skyward towers but also straight across at other people, New Yorkers, going about their daily business.

To Take the Night for Granted

The night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness
I learned the language of another world.

- BYRON

I don’t suppose I’m the only one that thinks this – that as I’m wandering back to my room after a long night of study, and my eyes stray casually to the sky, and there are all the stars, that I think I’ve been rather unfair to night. It’s the same as when you decide to sleep outside for some strange reason (because actual sleep is hard to come by in those situations) and forget the rugged wildness of the night sky. As a child I felt afraid of the dark, though it wasn’t really the dark I was afraid of. It was this great big terrible sense of the unknown. How could I be sure, as I would dash up the stairs late at night with nothing but a dark void behind, that some monster or raving lunatic wasn’t pursuing me? Why would I insist on igniting a chain of lights throughout the house as I went to bed, moving from light switch to light switch, terrified of crossing through even the briefest space of darkness?

All this to say that I’ve grown up with a sort of resistance to the night, when actually it is a thing of its own special beauty. Edward Young wrote that by night an atheist half believes in God. According to the psalmist, the heavens declare the handiworks of the Lord. It is in the dead of night, as we are granted a glimpse of the far field of heaven above, that it becomes so clear, in an almost childish way, that God is real and He is ruler.

So of course I had to propose this question to a friend of mine: will there be night in Heaven? He didn’t seem to think so, the most obvious reason being that the Light of God would bathe all things in radiance, and never would we dwell in the sort of obscurity night provides, that great absence of light. And here is my pondering, that if we can truly say there is Beauty to be seen and appreciated in night - in the ethereal otherworldliness of moonlight, the awesome infinitude of starlight, even the strange and wonderful fading of things into dusk – then is that simply a temporal pleasure God has provided us with on Earth, and never intended to last beyond our death? Is night simply a celestial complication, a mere consequence of our planet’s rotation? I believe with God there are no coincidences, that He could have simply created our planet stationary, with no need to turn itself or turn its path about the sun. But then – we wouldn’t get to experience the night. Or maybe the fact that half our lives are spent in darkness forces us to appreciate the clarity and beauty of the day, of the sun, of the light that makes all Nature known to us, unobscured and beautiful. Think about it.