A Ghost in New York

It is a strange thing to be in a city of 8 million people and not know a single soul. It is stranger still when low clouds loom over the whole city and make its steel towers disappear into the fog. Those manmade canyons can make you feel so overwhelmingly small. Yet when you can't see the sky, it all feels claustrophobic in a bizarre kind of way.

I hopped a train to New York a couple of days ago. I went alone and didn't really know what I was going to do. But I felt like I should go. This great metropolis was only a ride on the rails away and I hadn't been there in 8 years. Why not? And I'm glad I went, but it was this disembodied experience because I felt small, because I was all alone.

It occurred to me at one point that something could happen to me and no one would know for awhile. Not that I was ever afraid that something would happen to me. But when you're alone in a place that big, you're a stranger on the train. A ghost. And with most subway commuters looking down at their phones or newspapers, with their eyes jutting every which way. It was like there was a fog between us all. I was a ghost to them. They were ghosts to me.

I went to 9/11 Museum and ate dinner at Lombardi's on Spring Street. After pizza, I rode the subway under the river into Brooklyn. I wanted to to walk the bridge back into Manhattan and see the skyline lit up at night. But the fog had thickened. It obscured everything beyond 100 feet in front of me. I couldn't see the island. Hundreds of millions of lights were invisible. One of the largest cities in the world was just over the river and you wouldn't have known it.

I walked on and the journey took on a quality of surreality. It was beautiful, the fog turning every street lamp into a hazy glow and the suspension cables rising, rising, rising into nothing until the Brooklyn Bridge's granite towers revealed themselves. People walked and ran and biked and took selfies along the way. Yet still the city hid behind the cloud.

Until I got closer. The closer I got, the more lights appeared; at first just a hazy twinkle. Eventually Manhattan was unveiled. I never saw everything. There was no dramatic skyline that I imagined. But I did see the lights. They broke through the hazy darkness as I drew closer. And there was a rush at that discovery. Not that I ever doubted the city was on the other side, but I could have stood on the other side of the river, stomped my feet over the fact that the fog obscured my view, what I thought I was going to get, and left. But I would have missed the eerie beauty of my journey. I would have missed the city emerging from a fog.

I thought about the people on the subway and rushing past me on busy sidewalks. I thought about how I was obscured from them and they from me. There seems to be a fog. Maybe we just need to move closer, across whatever bridges create a gulf between us. If I draw closer, if I unveil myself, would I have seen the lights of their eyes?

And as the bridge descended into Manhattan, I couldn't help but think about God who so many times seems to be lost in a cloud. The One who often in scripture seems to be intentionally obscured from our view. That fog can be frustrating. We want God to dazzle us. We want to see the light and when we don't, we sometimes stomp our feet and go home. God remains a holy ghost to us.

But when we draw nearer, we catch a glimpse. Sometimes the walk is long and the fog doesn't completely burn off. But we see the light. We see enough to know someone is there. But to see we have to draw near. That journey in and of itself might reveal things to us before the light itself is unveiled.

My hope for me and for you is that we would not stand on the other side of the river. Whether it is a loved one, a neighbor, a stranger, or the God of the Universe, I hope we will journey through the fog and draw near. I hope that we learn something as we draw closer. I hope that we discover some of the lights that we seek.