Here is New York

~ by Bowie Snodgrass.  Bowie works in midtown Manhattan as the Web Content Editor for EpiscopalChurch.org and lives uptown; she also serves on the steering committee of Christian Churches Together in the USA and is a co-founder of Transmission, a house church in the city.

"A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning." E.B. White, Here is New York, 1949

I found a first edition hardcover of E.B. White's Here is New York in my bookcase this week.  The nameplate says "ex libris T.J. Snodgrass, M.D.," from the library of my great-grandfather (a Wisconsin surgeon whose father and grandfather were Methodist circuit ministers).

White's whole essay is large type on less than fifty small pages.  I read it in two days (it could be read in an hour), shocked at how pertinent it remains, how prophetic, how perfectly written, and how many questions it raises about trying to be Christ in this perilous city . . .

Samir, here are some pulled quotes from White's love letter to New York City, selected for the six of you who are moving out here at the end of June:

"On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy. . . for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail."

"New York is the concentrate of art and commerce and sport and religion and entertainment and finance, bringing to a single compact arena the gladiator, the evangelist, the promoter, the actor, the trader and the merchant."

"New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation. . ."

"The quality of New York that insulates its inhabitants from life . . . is a rather rare gift, and I believe it has a positive effect on the creative capacities of New Yorkers---for creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions."

"In summer the city contains (except for tourists) only die-hards and authentic characters."

"The collision and the intermingling of these millions of foreign-born people representing so many races and creeds makes New York a permanent exhibit of the phenomenon of one world.  The citizens of New York are tolerant not only from disposition but from necessity."

"The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York in the sound of the jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition."

"All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn born fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself, and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority.  In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightening, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm."

New York and I look forward to having you, your family, and Faith House here!   

Blessings!

Comments

[Alvin Poblacion]

Bowie!
You make The City feel like home! We look forward to joining with you too.
Al & Rose