NYC - A Holy Place, II

On Sunday after spending my first few hours thinking about Jesus, God, and the vineyard, we hopped on the Subway to head to our Kickball game. On the subway platform about halfway to our destination, I turned to my wife and said, "NYC is a holy place!"

I was inspired to say that just based on my experience that morning: Church, Coffee hour post-service with friendly folks, and the rush to make sure we got to kickball on time. Nothing overtly-holy in all that, more like an internal feeling. I tend to think NYC is a holy place anyway.

Just then, the Holy wanted to make itself "present." Next to us was a young man drinking a cup of Starbucks coffee. He stood up and walked over to a lady selling churros and asked for a bag of churros. He pulled out a $20 bill, but the vendor didn't have change. He was about to walk away from the vendor when a middle-aged woman enjoying her own bag of churros took out a dollar, paid for his bag, and gave it to him. He looked at her curiously, said "thank you," and sat down to enjoy his snack.

I looked at my wife, Wendy, and smiled. "See, we live in a holy place."

When the train came and we got on, the same young man got on with us but dropped his headphones and didn't notice. A gentleman who had gotten on behind him picked them up and brought them over to him. The young man smiled and said, "thank you."

The gentleman went back to stand next to his pregnant wife who was seated. An older woman got up from her seat and offered it to this gentleman so he could sit with his wife. Wendy and I were seated across from him, his pregnant wife, and what we assumed was her sister and the sister's toddler baby girl. The two women talked about babies, cooed, cuddled, and kissed the toddler girl. The little girl kissed her mom, played with her aunt, and the gentleman looked on at his family with a huge grin on his face. They sat there, a blessed family, enjoying each other's company on a Sunday subway ride.

Just then, a trio of older men walked onto the subway and began to sing. They harmonized, beautifully, some old gospel tune asking Mary to bless us, to ask her son Jesus to bless us and watch over us. The family across from us tapped their feet, with the mom dancing with her toddler in her lap.

As we got off the train at our stop, the trio still singing, I contemplated what we had just experienced -
- an Asian man getting the gift of churros from a Latina woman
- a white tattooed man returning headphones to the same Asian man
- an older Black woman giving up her seat to the white tattooed man so he could sit with his pregnant wife
- two heavily tattooed white women, one with baby in lap, one with baby in womb, showing a tremendous amount of love to the child
- three tattooed white folk tapping their feet and dancing to the gospel tune of a trio of older black men

In that moment, the race actually didn't matter (I bring it up only to show my love for the diversity of this city), the gender didn't matter, the socio-economic class didn't matter, the sexual orientation didn't matter, the faith or creed didn't matter. Here were New Yorkers being New Yorkers.

I looked at my wife, and she looked at me with a smile on her face. She knew what I was going to say. And she agreed.

"It's a holy place," I said.

"It totally is."