Baptist Spirituality

There is something about my visit to New York this time around that differs from times past. I am not a big fan of coming back to Staten Island, but this time — with a 3-week stretch set before me — I am sensing a peculiar re-connection with the soil and concrete of my childhood.

One way to explain this is due to the time I’m taking to be here. Usually when we visit, we’re here a few days proving true the adage that a vacation to visit family is no vacation at all. Upon arriving for sabbatical, however, I feel as if I am living back into what it means to be home. It took only a few minutes to figure out how I will move and fill the space in my mother’s and her husband’s two-bedroom apartment without imposing on their lives too much. I put together a daily schedule of prayer, writing and study, and of relaxation that keeps my focus on God and the reason for my long-term stay.

I am appreciating the things left behind when my family and I moved away from Staten Island in 1987: The delis that are open at all hours if you get a hankering for a pastrami sandwich. The people who talk louder than me and the children who play in the streets like the old days when we played stickball in gaps in the traffic. The occasional crazy guy who walks a bit cock-eyed, smoking a Pall Mall with tarnished fingernails and brandishing dime-store Velcro sneakers.

I am reminded of the words of an essay by E. B. White of Charlotte’s Web fame, titled This is New York,

Mass hysteria is a terrible force, yet New Yorkers seem always to escape it by some tiny margin: they sit in stalled subways without claustrophobia, they extricate themselves from panic situations by some lucky wisecrack, they meet confusion and congestion with patience and grit — a sort of perpetual muddling through. Every facility is inadequate — the hospitals and schools and playgrounds are overcrowded, the express highways are feverish, the unimproved highways and bridges are bottlenecks; there is not enough air and not enough light, and there is usually either too much heat or too little. But the city makes up for its hazards and its deficiencies by supplying its citizens with massive doses of a supplementary vitamin — the sense of belonging to something unique, cosmopolitan, mighty and unparalleled” (White, p. 33).

White’s acute observation hits home. On my first full day here — only 4 hours in — I jumped into the city’s feverish pace: I showered in a shower so small that I could only bathe one-half of my body at a time, looking like Buddy Elf showering in Papa Elf’s hollow; called my sister to make plans to see an old Nicolas Cage flick next week even though I hate Nicolas Cage; purchased a hand mirror and umbrella from the discount corner store that seemed to have exactly what I needed; saw a lady blow out her flip flop at the coffee shop and apologized to her that, if I had my duct tape, I could’ve fixed that flat in two minutes tops; had a lady corral her children when I was approaching the public library with my backpack and raggedy hat, looking like a hobo ’bout to ask for pocket change; had a co-ed sit and study across from me at my small table in the library for no other reason than not having enough places to sit, silently trusting me to watch her laptop when she stepped away to make a phone call and me trusting her with my laptop while I called friends at Temple Beth Shalom upon hearing about the hospitalization of their old Rabbi Emeritus who was father to us all; cried while leaning on a telephone pole near Amboy and Johnson as a result of that news; drank a terrible cup of coffee served by a barista who looked like she’d rather be anywhere in the world but work; and spotted a bald eagle at the local pier watching the Kill Van Kull River’s current carry a body or two to wherever Jimmy Hoffa was laid to rest.

Such is a day in New York and, for now, I feel at home.

Source: E. B. White, This is New York, introduction by Roger Angell (New York: Harper, 1999).