I recently gave a tour of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn to a high school youth choir from Georgia.
I ask, “What do Southerners think the South is better at than New York?”
They give the answers we would expect.
“The South is better at football.”
You can have that one.
Brett Younger
“The South is friendlier.”
I am looking at a sanctuary of Kimmy Schmidts who smile at everyone they pass. Southerners are better at asking the people whose mother they do not know, “How’s your mother?”
Another teenager says, “The food in the South is better.”
I know this is wrong, so I argue, “Not everything has to be fried, and pizza in Georgia is ketchup on cardboard.”
They get mean.
One says, “New York is dirty. The streets smell.”
“Well, if you want a town that’s so boring it’s clean, we’re probably not your first choice, but that’s not a way to judge the greatest city in the world.”
Then one of the chaperones says, “New York is loud and busy and crowded. I miss quiet. I miss trees.”
“We have trees, but you do have to look for quiet places. You have to notice the flowers. You have to pay attention to the green spaces. You have to look up now and then.”
“We have trees, but you do have to look for quiet places.”
Living in New York is amazing, and it is hard. Our city is crowded. New York has the highest population density in the U.S., more than 27,000 people per square mile. New York has been described as “people packed into a small space like salmon in a Chilean fish farm.”
The pace of the city and the lack of space are stressful. According to a study by the City of New York and the Department of City Planning, tourists walk 11% slower than locals. Not a lot of cities have a Department of City Planning that studies how slow the tourists walk. Have you heard the phrase “pedestrian aggressiveness syndrome”? We have that.
Researchers from MIT point to “line rage” — which is the stress caused by having to wait in line. We wait in line a lot. Signs in our subway claim “Courtesy is contagious.” So is rage.
Anger happens. Marissa Conrad suggests we think of some of the iconic New York characters. Seinfeld’s Elaine Benes is funny when she is angry. Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle is scary. Network’s Howard Beale, “I’m mad as hell,” is easy to understand. These characters could only live in New York.
New York is a hard place to make friends. We have more than our share of loneliness, anxiety and depression. The noise — traffic and construction — is overwhelming. The fast-paced competitive environment takes a toll on our mental well-being.
The city prioritizes doing over being. Not only is that unhealthy, it is addictive. New York does not have much respect for recharging. The city that never sleeps could use more naps. We have to work hard not to work too hard. We have to work to be still, stop and see the creation that surrounds us.
If we read the news, we understand how someone could be an atheist, but if we look up at the sky, we feel like there is something more. When our souls tell us to spend time outside, our souls are yearning for something more than the pigeons, squirrels and clouds. Our hearts are yearning for the one who makes those things.
When New Yorkers are afraid, lonely or unhappy, we, like the rest of the world, do well to take a walk and look around. If we pay attention, we will see we are surrounded by good gifts. We slow down. We walk on the grass. We pay attention to the trees — in the summer, green leaves; in the fall, yellow and orange; in the winter, covered in snow; in spring, red buds. There are 3 trillion trees on earth, growing new beauty day after day, night after night.
“When we pay attention to the creation around us, we stop trying to fit God into our lives and start seeing ourselves in God’s life.”
When we think about the vastness of creation, it is absurd to worry about the small concerns that make us feel small. Almost everything that makes us feel small is itself infinitesimally small. When we pay attention to the creation around us, we stop trying to fit God into our lives and start seeing ourselves in God’s life.
Our happiest experiences are when we find ourselves in something bigger than we are. When the music is so beautiful that we lose ourselves in the music. When we are reading a book that is so absorbing we cannot put down this story that is bigger than ours. When we are looking at a river or a mountain or the face of someone we love with all our being, we are no longer thinking about ourselves at all, we are happily, blessedly lost in something bigger than we are.
If we look to creation, we will see that life is too big for small concerns, small irritations, small dreams. When we see ourselves in God’s creation, we see life is too big for selfish motives. Creation is too big for anything but love.
Mechthild of Magdeburg was a 13th-century Catholic nun and mystic who invited others to find themselves as part of God’s creation:
A fish cannot drown in water.
A bird does not fall in air.
In the fire of creation,
God doesn’t vanish.
The fire brightens.
Each creature God made
must live in its own true nature.
How could I resist my nature,
that lives for oneness with God?
Life is too big to judge people — including ourselves — too big to envy others’ achievement, and too big to live from irritation to irritation. We can live larger. We can give ourselves to ultimate love, infinite compassion, fantastic generosity, freedom to stop caring about things that make us feel small, power to fight the battles worth fighting, and the capacity to ignore anything that makes us feel like less than God’s creation.
Creation takes us out of the rush of practicality to contemplate and wonder. When we are about to forget God’s breathtaking hope, we need to be still, give thanks and let God care for our souls. Creation invites us to give ourselves to God, who is bigger than we are, and to the creation that is bigger than our troubles.
Look out the window now and then. Birds chirping, sun shining, summer is here. Enjoy the sun, sky and trees. Go outside and take it all in. Pray with your eyes open.
Brett Younger serves as senior minister at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, N.Y.