My tummy is full, I'm somewhat rested, and I'm done walking for a few hours. It's time to write a new blog. I'm not sure if New York City will ever cease to amaze me. Each block holds a new spread of treasures. This morning I woke up around 9:30, and went down to Lenny's on Columbus on the upper westside and met Dmac (aka Dr. McMahan, but I call him Dmac most of the time. . . it's kind of an inside joke from last year's trip that stuck.) He and I needed to talk about class today. We sent all of the students on a photo scavenger hunt all around the city this afternoon where they have to find different cultural people and items and NYC landmarks. It should be fun to hear their stories. If we planned it right, they'll be in all four boroughs within the next 4-5 hours. And it's all one city, so it doesn't seem like it would be that difficult of a task, but I guess it's a really big city! So back to Lenny's. It's kind of like a Panera type place and Billy, one of the guys on the trip, recommended the bacon, egg and cheese sandwich. It was great! With a fresh cup of coffee, it was the perfect morning meal. Then we had class on a huge rock in Central Park. It doesn't get much better than that!
Well, we arrived in the city around 7:30pm local time Thursday night. We were all exhausted. Grandfather dropped me off at school around 5:30am and so it had been a long day of traveling. But little did we know that we had to lug all of our stuff all the way from Penn Station, which is on 34th Street to our home on 75th! Subways aren't really conducive to travel with a heavy suitcase, even if it's a roller suitcase! It was a little bit of a dance. . . and then a lug to get them up all three flights of stairs to my room. We are staying in a traditional brownstone boarding house. I'm not exactly sure if it's considered a hostel or not. My room is shared with one other girl, Amy, and has two spacious closets, a sink, a fireplace, desk, and a few chairs. We also have a beautiful fireplace with a large mirror. Over the sink there is a little plaque explaining that this room, probably 100 years ago, was the nursery. There are some double doors that open into the next room that were designed to provide easy entrance into the nursery from the nanny's room. It's a beautiful home that must have been a luxury mansion at one point. The bathroom is shared with all of the other rooms on our floor. It has a huge porcelan bathtub and a marble counter around the sink. It's very beautiful.
We live at 51 W 75th Street in between West Central Park Ave and Columbus Ave. On 72nd there is an enterance to Central Park and across the street is the Dakota Apartment Building where John Lennon was shot and where Yoko Ono still lives. It's really classy. Dmac mentioned tha
t the rent in the apartments around us proably runs in the $5,000 per month range. Prime real estate! The street is lined with trees that are beautiful and green right now. The green of the tre
es and the varying colors of
the brownstones make a stunning site!
We are a lot farther from the bussling and busy part of downtown where we lived last year, but I'm fully expect
ing to fall in love with this neighborhood too.
Yesterday we went to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. I had been last year so I was not as impacted by the enormity of the Statue or the tears of Ellis Island, however I spent quite a bit of time thinking about some interesting stuff that the Lord brought up. I found several names on the wall of honor for those who came through Ellis Island. The first was Abraham Risser and the second, Margret Walsh Shackelford. I have no idea who either of these people are, but they are somehow related to me. It's interesting how peoples names are often all that exists of them after a hundred years. There are hundreds of thousands of names published at Ellis Island and they all represent an individual person who walked through with all their belongings on their back. 
I had fun dreaming about who Abraham Risser may have been. Maybe he was young, maybe he was old. He had probably come from Germany. He may have been a farmer with a bad harvest or maybe he was fleeing religious persecution.
Did he bring his family or was he alone? And what about Margret? Who were these people? It was fun to imagine them there to begin a new life in a new country.
When we were on Liberty Island I began to think about freedom and about liberty. I began to think about how they are often opposite
of how we feel. Why is it that our fleshly desires have trapped us into these bodies and forced us to live lives of slavery to our desires and to our downfalls? The Statue of Liberty is a HUGE (literally) representation of the longing in the human spirit for freedom. It sounds like such a wonderful idea to us. Doesn't being free just seem to be beautiful? When I think of freedom, I think of how I would run through a field of daisies or dance in my underwear in an empty house. Swinging really high on a tree swing sounds so free or eating big chunks of fresh, cool pineapple. Strange, I know, but it sounds so free and fun. How does a green lady with a torch and a book symbolize freedom? She is such a huge symbol for one of the core values of this nation! And yet, I walk into the city and I look at people's faces and at the way they are spending their money. No one is really free here. There is so much hurt and so many helpless people.
On Thursday night some guys and I were walking back to our house and a guy approached us to ask for a light. We had all just picked up matchbooks from the restaurant we had eaten at, so Phil offered him one. While he lit it, he stood there and told us that he was hurting. He said that he had been hurt by people but that a lot of it was probably his fault too. He said that we all deal in our own way, but no one can be free of hurt. No one can be free. And then those two wonderful words came to me. . . "But God." It if for freedom that he has set us free. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And then there was peace. I have freedom. I am free. It is for freedom that I have the Spirit living in me and I can set people free through him! Maybe even whole cities of people. All the nations of the world live in New York City. I can't wait to spend some more time here and get to know some of those people. Maybe I'll make this my home someday. . . and you can all come to visit!
No comments:
Post a Comment