New York. The Statue of Liberty rose above the grain elevator, out the west window as we visited our daughter Lianna & Billy and son Connor & Jenn in Brooklyn recently. Lady Liberty stood tall above the industrial park and commercial area of west Brooklyn with pulsing, throbbing energies of life, business and beneath 4th Ave subways scream through the cacophony of it all. At the mouth of East River with ships, boats, barges, ferries, sailboats and cruise ships moving and resting all around her she beckons; bring me your poor, your weary and your broken hearted…. Reminding me of the preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America, which most people seem to forget these days:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
It is not for just a select few, nor for corporations but for the people, we the people of this Union.
Seems to me that the people who make the most noise and fuss about the Constitution these days know little of the context and the intention, to establish and insure a union based on freedom. And not on anger, limitation and exclusion. “Establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare and secure the blessings of Liberty.”
New York has all that and more. In the streets, subways and stops of the boroughs surge people in all shapes, appearances and orientations. Of which Walt Whitman sang: “Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations.” We rode the subways from Brooklyn to Manhattan and back many times, from downtown to uptown, from Union station to Harlem. Walking through Central Park we came upon a Shakespeare play, Twelfth Night, was a delight. We found our way to the Met, MOMA and Brooklyn Museum for such excellent art, preserved and set for all to see.
We visited a new friend at St. Bartholomew’s Church, which stands in marble elegance beside the Waldorf Astoria on Park Avenue. Yet they serve 600 homeless pilgrims a week and help countless others with clothing, education and guidance to find their way. A place of heart centered compassion that served as a triage center nine years ago in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedies. It serves the walking wounded today.
We walked the Highline, a former elevated train track turned delightful walk-way by friends with fine landscaped architecture and art installations from West Village to Chelsea. Across the Hudson we could see the New Jersey shore. At the Hudson’s mouth stood the Statue of Liberty still. We ate foods of many of the diverse and delicious cultures. We shared stories.
New York is people, people who go there to find their dreams, people who live there to dream their lives, people who end up there to live. For whatever reasons, there are people in a crazy crush at every turn, on every street, stoop and corner. And there is a spirit that is surprisingly friendly and alive. Haw ya doin’! And we have all come to look for America, as the song goes. And Walt Whitman sang on; “Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me! Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd, What gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand and with voices I love call be promptly and loudly by my nighest name as I approach? What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that looks in my face? Which fuses me into you now and pours my meaning into you?” Indeed Walt Whitman walked those shores and his spirit lingers there still.
And this morning, as I awoke in P.A., the full moon danced above the Olympic Mountains. Here is peace and here is beauty.
Peace, John
