too slow these days to fit into this place...

While going through the turnstile at the 53rd Street subway station in Brooklyn, the sensor kept beeping, telling me to "swipe again." I did this three more times with careful intentionality 'til my daughter advised, "Faster, Dad. You have to do it faster." Which worked - although it brought up a spontaneous, low groan from within. As we scurried down the stairs to catch the approaching coach that would carry us to church, I heard myself say to no one in particular: "I guess I'm too slow these days to fit into this place." 

The whole way into Manhattan those words stayed with me only to become lost somewhere between 45th and Rector Street. They popped up again this morning, however, while gazing upon that amazing yellow maple tree in the wetlands beyond our house: "I guess I'm too slow these days to fit into this place." How true. We used to live in Manhattan - at 110th and Broadway - while I attended Union Theological Seminary. I used to ride those trains regularly, too at all hours of the day and night. I used to traverse the boroughs on my way to an internship in Jamaica, Queens. Or cross the city's cultures by rail on my way to the suburbs of Connecticut. For decades I delighted in returning to this metropolis to visit daughters in grad school, new teaching gigs, or in pursuit of new places to call home. Going to conferences always quickened my pace, too as I relearned how to move with the groove of the island that never sleeps. And while I would still relish strolling from the Seminary quad at Reinhold Niebuhr Place and Broadway past Lincoln Center on my way to Times Square, albeit at a much slower gait than in the old days, I must also honor the truth that "I am too slow these days to fit into this place" anymore.

Too slow to be harried. Too slow because holding the hands of my grandchildren is a treasure far greater than someone else's need to hustle us down the stairs. Too slow not to notice the stunning art deco details of countless buildings on my way from here to there. Or the intricate mosaics in old subway stations. Too slow to fret over who is too late to work. Too slow to ignore the parent who needs a hand carrying the stroller up the stairs. Too slow to be swept away by the pulsating rhythms and addictions of commerce and fear. Too slow not to keep pace with my sweetheart. Too slow to let my confusion with buying a subway card make any difference. Too slow to pretend my back doesn't hurt. Too slow, too slow, too slow.

Prayer, contemplation, tending the garden for each season, baking bread, practicing music, and poetry all tend to slow me down. That is one of their gifts. In a posting from BRAIN PICKINGS Maria Popova quotes Herman Hesse: "When we have learned to listen to trees then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy.” That is, then we can see and feel the joy of each moment trusting what is true at the pace of holy time - kairos time - rather than reality shaped only by punching a time clock. I am grateful that she also adds these words from William Blake: “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way… As a man is, so he sees.” (https://www.brainpickings. org/2018/09/ 11/martin-buber-tree/?mccid=530 e5fb22c&mc_eid=d53a910493)

While clicking on one of the numerous ancillary links in an article about Martin Buber I came upon this poem by Maya Angelou. I was moved by an excerpt but intimidated when I saw the full length of this poem. And at just that moment, my subway revelation whispered to me again: "I guess I'm too slow these days to fit into this place."And I savored the whole thing. 

A BRAVE AND STARTLING TRUTH

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.