Maybe only we can take our wounds and use them to create a new reality.

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Alexis comes in for a visit. She hasn’t been here since we came back. I met her first when she and her husband came to talk about  interfaith marriage. He later died of male breast cancer. I admire how she has taken her grief and used it for life, for organizing for education and action around male breast cancer. How she has grown as a woman and a mother. How she has reclaimed and recreated a life using her eye as a designer, her artist’s heart. We talk about wounds, how we have to claim them as having made us who we are,part of our identity yet not defining us.How we transform them into something new.  I am thankful to have been a part of her journey. 

She noticed cardboard and other things on the steps. I hadn’t looked yet. I feel somewhat embarrassed. She remembers when the doors were always closed and people camped out here all day. I tell her it’s not like that now. That we’ve taken the steps back and our doors are open. And as she leaves, I put on gloves, pick up all the refuse. And sweep the steps. 

I only see Martin for a minute. There is much to talk about, but Noche is in the middle of a long rehearsal before heading out on tour. They’ll be in Arizona tomorrow. 

A man is in the sanctuary looking around. I come and ask him if I can help. He says he’s been here before. I don’t suppose the organ still works? he asks. And I explain that I don’t know.That the man who used to play it died and we haven’t bee able to turn it on. Thaat it’s an Austin hybrid. That there’s an article about it online. (http://www.nycago.org/Organs/NYC/html/WestParkPres.html ) My visitor tells me he was the former organist at St. John the Divine Cathedral. No longer there but still an organist. I tell him I’d love to find out if it can still work. We’ve seen the bellows. I would like to know too, he says. 

I’ve got meetings to race to. The Interfaith Assembly on Housing and Homelessness. And the Presbytery’s Council on Witness to Society and the World. (CWSW). And then I will return. My friend Beppe will stop by.We’ll head to the B. He’s coming to believe that it is creativity that sets us apart as a species. And I agree. That creation makes us partners with the creator. He sees his call as helping people access and activate their creativity. And I’m trying to create a place where that can happen. 

Maybe only we can take our wounds and use them to create a new reality.