Soul and the City: Finding God in the Noise and Frenzy of Life

Chapter One: Finding God in the City The Gateway for Seekers The nave's blue light bathes me. The midtown church arches over its visitors. Quietly, I stop to pray. After a few hushed moments, I become aware of a woman beside me. She hovers there, shifting from one foot to the other. Sensing some spiritual urgency, I offer my spot to her for her own prayer. But the woman remains standing, hands on hips, and confronts me: "So. Tell." She leans closer. "I gotta know." She leans closer still. "Who does your hair?" In an urban environment, it's easy to be distracted from our spiritual focus, even in a glorious house of worship. The traditional spiritual aids of silence, solitude, simplicity, and serenity aren't always available in a city. The pace is fast, rather than contemplative. Nature's focal points are scarce amid glass-and-concrete towers. Prayer can seem muted by traffic noise and vendors' cries. In bustling streets, it may be difficult to make time and space to practice God's presence. And yet...isn't it in the metropolis, the marketplace, the municipal magnet that we often feel the greatest need for a sense of the sacred? Sin. Stress. Seduction. Soulless-ness. For many people, these words are synonymous with city lifeand they form a time-honored viewpoint. As symbols of evil, the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah live in our collective consciousness; the name of one has even entered our language. Throughout Scripture, folklore, and literature, the "big city" is often seen as a tempting nexus of vice where we stand in real danger of losing our souls. Is it any wonder that New York City is dubbed the "Big Apple," a large and luscious logo for original sin? This image of cities lingers in the modern imagination. In Bernard Malamud's famous novelThe Natural,the young hero, Roy Hobbs, leaves his farm and loses his innocence in Chicago, where he suffers a deep fall from grace. In the classic storyThe Wizard of Ozby L. Frank Baum, the heroine, Dorothy, sets out to find "the answer" in the fabled Emerald City. Like a pilgrim, she travels with other seekers, only to find that the Wiseman of Oz is a fraud, and the city lives up to its archetypal image of hucksterism, especially compared with Dorothy's home on a Kansas farm. These themes stand in a long tradition of cautionary tales about the soul and the citynot just in folklore, but in the Bible. There, writes Robert C. Linthicum, "the city is depicted as both a dwelling place of God and his people and as a center for Satan and his minions. The city is one primary stage on which the drama of salvation is played out. And that is no less the case as mega-cities become the focal point for most human activity and aspirations in the world." Cities, however, are also strongly associated with the sacred. In Scripture and song, heaven itself is often portrayed as a city. Jerusalem, Rome, Mecca, Canterbury, and other earthly cities are enduring metropolitan centers dedicated to the holy. In the Middle Ages, the great cathedrals of Europe rose in cities. For centuries, these cities have attracted pilgrims who still come to gather in reverence, from Compostela in Spain, to Canterbury in England, and of course to that crossroads of faith, Jerusalem. Modern cities attract pilgrims too: seekers of all ages, who come for change, opportunity, andincreasingly now for retireesculture and convenience. I've always gravitated toward cities to find inspiration from their diversity and their culture. When I first moved back to Manhattan, I thought the museums, theater, and concerts would fill my soulHeidish, Marcy is the author of 'Soul and the City: Finding God in the Noise and Frenzy of Life', published 2008 under ISBN 9781400074365 and ISBN 1400074363.