Belong

A significant, and wonderful, turn of events today. Margaret Grace moved to a rehabilitation hospital in New Jersey, and out of the NICU. Today is June 16th. 3 months after her due date. 5 1/2 months after she arrived in the world on the last day of the aughts, December 31st, 2009. At the rehab hospital, the plan is to prepare her to come home by intensive physical therapy and support to help her breathing and eating. We don't know the time frame--we have been doing this too long to expect a time frame.

***

The prospect of our daughter coming into our house has sent us house-hunting. Margaret (whom I'm leaning toward calling Maisy... hope Beth is OK with that) will come home with 16 hours a day of nursing care and medical equipment. Beth and I decided that the 550 sq. ft. 4th floor walk-up that we have enjoyed for the last 6 years in the West Village is not ready for both Margaret AND her new friend, Nurse Ratched. So we're house hunting.

We spent last Sunday afternoon walking neighborhoods in Brooklyn and all I wanted to observe about the experience is how big New York is. And if New York is big, the world is that much bigger. What does that sense of big-ness do to a person?

The way that I've made life in New York work for me is that I've made it frightfully small. Or maybe it's become small with a wife on bed rest for 11 weeks, and the last 5 months of daily hospital trips. There hasn't been room for adventure. Other New Yorkers, perhaps, take advantage of the city's expansiveness, but even in the best of conditions, I'm a homebody who makes the world smaller. If Walt Whitman said that the universe was contained in a single blade of grass, it's not outlandish to suggest that even a New York that is reduced to the size of one's daily commute and neighborhood errands is still enormous.

But to take the subway for 45 minutes into Brooklyn, walk up out of ground and to find oneself in a neighborhood one has never seen, full of flat stacked upon flat, full of people with fully-formed lives that never once have touched yours... it was like a good downward dog for my sense of perspective. There is so much life here. My mental world--my set of concerns--is nothing against the backdrop of this city.

There was a time when this kind of thought overwhelmed me with a feeling of insignificance. When I arrived in New York, and when I started in ministry here, I had delusions of grandeur--I really believed that I would make a difference in the city. I imagined leading a ministry that would attract people--and media, and if media, more people. It feels embarrassing to write that, but it was true. Against the looming specter of my own insignificance (which New York can press upon a person with all the subtlety of a piano falling on you), I fought back with irrational flights of self-importance.

But these last few days, as I've again been confronted with the city's sheer size, I haven't felt the need to fight back. I don't imagine greater importance. I suspect that I'm feeling OK with the ways that I do matter to people in this place. I know I have a place here. I'm not famous. I'm not newsworthy. I don't attract attention for my looks or my charisma or my intelligence. But after 5+ years of ministry, after 9 years of forming friendships here, I know, in a small way, I matter. I have roots. I fit in this ecosystem. I consume, I contribute, I matter.

Feeling secure, this city's height and breadth, width and depth, unfathomable complexity, can be beautiful, not frightening.

It is important--is it everything?--to belong.