Cosmos

We dove into the sea of humanity in downtown Manhattan today. The sheer density of people and culture in a few square miles of city is intense. My son Matt said it best when he observed that, though diversity is a reality in many places, in New York City diversity is accessible because people of all makes, shapes, sizes, and sorts happily interact together.

While people in my view define New York City's personality, the side effects of the teeming populace create a thick backdrop of sight, sound, and smell. Giant screens, some spreading across multiple stories and most of city blocks, flash corporate slogans, broadway show ads, and every product and service imaginable from every angle, left, right, ahead, behind, and up. Taxi horns, chatter, the shifting gears of buses and trucks, currents of street music, and the bass rumble of the subway infuse the city with waves and tides of sound. To my delight, the predominant smell of the city is of good food saturating the air with savory aromas massaging the nose.

When I looked at a map of Manhattan, saw that the distance from Times Square past Central Park to Columbia University is less than four miles, I thought walking from point to point would be easy. I didn't account for the need to stop and wait for a walk light every block, nor how the thick foot traffic slows progress on foot to what I'm sure is about a half mile an hour on average. One cannot stride quickly through Manhattan. The city, in all ways, is simply too dense for a speedy walk, Central Park the exception -- but no one is in a hurry in Central Park. Taxis, subway, bus and, for the wealthy, limos are the way to move from place to place if getting from point A to B is what matters.

Excited and agog at all this, we came to Christ Church (United Methodist) on 60th and Park Ave, a landmark for it's Byzantine architecture and artistry. We stepped into the sanctuary and found an island of serenity. Prayer candles flickered from the altar rail past mostly open, empty pews beneath tiled, vaulted ceilings depicting the heavens. The exalted Christ looks down from the chancel dome, seated above Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, each holding their Gospel books. We had stepped into a world within a world, passing from human chaos to divine cosmos.

We lingered in the sanctuary for an hour that felt timeless, grateful for an oasis of peace and order we would have least expected to find here. I think -- this is what Sunday morning is for the average person: a touchstone of the way God intended the world to be, in the midst of the world human beings create. So we take the sense of Christ's Lordship with us into the swirling, sometimes crazed life we live.