Pilgrimage

This is not a sermon. I am just processing my trip to New York. And wondering how this is going to evolve into a paper on the church's response to trauma.

I did not intend to go on pilgrimage over spring break. I went to a prophetic preaching conference and gave myself an extra day in New York City to visit a friend and play tourist, since I had flown all the way out there. So, with my free day, I did what any liturgy nerd Christian would do – I found a weekday Eucharist. The only one I knew of was Trinity Church, and I like the magazine they publish, so I went.

Now, I am a liturgy nerd, but I am not a church architecture nerd. I live in a context, and was raised in a context, where the building is primarily a roof over head, and the walls are for keeping in the heat. It ought to be attractive, but not distracting. You might describe my personal favorite worship spaces as Danish Modern meets American Mid-Century. So, if you have been to Trinity Wall Street, a very old church by American standards, it was pretty mind boggling (and a little distracting) with all the carvings and stained glass and pillars. And don’t forget the stalls, which are like pews, but also like for horses.

What I did not expect, probably could not expect from my own context, were the crowds of non-participating spectators during the Eucharist. Truth to tell, my preferred worship spaces aren’t much for post card pictures, but even so, even before I was a practicing adult Christian, I would have felt a little weird watching people ‘do church.’ Sort of like cooking or going to the bathroom; some parts are not part of public life. I felt like a cultural artifact, and I am never going to be able to watch a documentary in the same way again. But I also got a glimpse of what I imagine a large catechumenate would have felt like. Since the table was offered as an open table, and I have no actual idea if the people standing along the back of the church did or would have come up to the front steps for communion, I don’t know if anyone broke through their watching and participated.


What is the quality of longing? How does it develop? Are we afraid of it because of our instant gratification society, or did your societal response to longing create this instant gratification life style?

I spoke with the priest after the service. Fr. Simons is the one who put the word pilgrimage into my head. Then he sent me down the street to St. Paul’s chapel to see what was going on down there. So I went walking down the street. I was thinking about Canterbury Tales and Taize and the catechumenate. I was wondering if people who worship in the cathedrals in Europe or Buddhist monasteries experience the weird feeling of being a cultural artifact, too.

Then I happened on the chapel, larger than most of the churches I have worshipped in. I went up the steps reluctantly, there were dozens of people milling around the property and doorways. Chapel, to my mind, says quiet, and there is nothing quiet about this place. On the front porch is a display and when I walk over to it, expecting a capital campaign or a history of the building.

It is a timeline for the year after 9/11.

I was not a practicing Christian on September 11, 2001. I was a recent college grad considering library school. I was living in a 5 floor (mostly) walk up with two small children. I remember shuffling out of the bedroom to ask my husband to turn down his movie. I remember when the airplanes were all grounded and the fighter jets were the only thing in the air, circling over my downtown apartment. Ten years later, I am still jumpy when I hear unexpected airplanes. I remember being completely ok with combing through every nook and cranny of Afganistan in order to find Osama Bin Laden. I rarely think of his name anymore.

I certainly did not know anything about St. Paul’s Chapel. I didn’t know that the Twin Towers were ‘out back’ and I did not know churches had anything to do with the cleanup and recovery, let alone acting as forward command. I did not know that we had a national shrine.

What is the nature of longing? What does it mean to offer healing and redemption to people who might not even believe in God, or that think the belief in God is why this happened?

I left St. Paul’s and walked along the back of the property to Ground Zero. I say the Freedom Tower being built and it looked no different to me, evoked nothing different to me that the usual feelings of industrious American building. On the ground, it didn’t look any different than the construction of a skyscraper in downtown San Francisco.

I walked on.
I took the subway to Penn Station.

Considering the time that I had after my visit to Ground Zero, considering my flight time, considering my promise to bring tourist swag to my now pre-teen children, considering my son asked me to ask for the 600th floor of the Empire State Building, that’s where I decided to go. I forgot to ask for a ride to Mt. Olympus.

Before going in, I decided to sit down for some lunch, read a book, and give my mind a rest from pilgrimage. It is tiresome work, especially making meaning and identity out of collective trauma.

I decided to splurge on the Sky Ride, an interactive video of New York from a helicopter, and narrated by Kevin Bacon. I was trying to have a silly tourist experience, and I unwittingly made another stop on pilgrimage. We were ushered into a dark circular room, lined with video screens, where we were given a narration of New Yorkers as survivors of tragedy, of people as brave and proud and resilient as the Greatest Generation, the people who rallied after Pearl Harbor. Firefighters and Police officers were lifted up as brave heroes. We were told that the Twin Towers would be in the video, we were warned of the emotional response they would bring.

I thought, that is sort of tacky –it’s been 10 years, they could edit the video.

The video had been edited. The towers were not in the full video, but there at the end, we heard the story of the Empire State building as the big brother, standing in their honor. We saw the twin lights shining into the night, then the towers.

I was brought again to longing. What is the function of longing in our lives? How does longing relate to mourning?

After the ride, I went to the elevator banks and went to the observation deck. I tried to find my hotel, but it wasn’t tall enough. I braved the wind and went to the front, to see the downtown skyline.

There was a guide, talking to some of my fellow pilgrims, about he skyline and where the towers would have been. Where the Freedom Tower is coming up. It was identifiable by the crane on top – as all new buildings have – and I remember thinking that building should always have a crane on top, so we will always have that visual symbol of building and re-building America. I remembered something a friend of mine from Sudan once said to me about America. Americans never leave buildings to decay in place, we always tear out the old and clean it up, and build something new. Something better.

I didn’t think about skylines until I was on the airplane that night, watching re-runs of TV. The show I was watching was so old, the Twin Towers are in the opening credits. And I realized that the New York skyline isn’t my skyline, not like San Francisco. Not like Portland or LA. This was my first trip to New York.

I wonder how it is that skylines are a symbol. How can one skyline become the symbol of collective trauma? Skylines change all the time. America is always changing. American is always replacing itself with something better.

There was nothing about this airplane ride that activated any traumatic consciousness for me. I fly often. The airport security did not make me feel safe – just annoyed as usual. My Persian cab driver is more a New Yorker than I will ever be. I spent some time wondering how to pronounce his name properly but mostly I slept. It never occurred to me to wonder about terrorists the entire time I was in New York.

As I flew across America, this was only my second trip to the East Coast, I was reminded again how big this country is. It is too big. We are too far apart, we speak too many dialects, we have too many recipes for Buffalo Wings. We are so scattered and so diverse, we can barely share a collective trauma.

How do we go on? How do we cross-pollinate with ourselves? How do we pilgrimage? How do we lift up the very idea of pilgrimage? How to support it? Do we even want to?