Night-Time
Streets
“Later,
when I stood in front of an altar waving incense, I would remember
standing in front of the bar at Dante's, waving cigarette smoke out
of my face, and the exact same feeling of tenderness would wash over
me, because the people in both places were so much alike. We were all
seeking company, meaning, solace, self-forgetfulness. Whether we
found those things or not, it was the seeking that led us to find
each other in the cloud even when we had nothing else in common.”
Barbara
Brown Taylor (Learning to Walk in the Dark)
In
her book, Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor
recounts her days as a cocktail waitress at Dante's in Atlanta's
underground. While she spent her school year in seminary, she spent
her summers at Dante's, where her day started at noon and ended at
four in the morning. She learned that life during the hours of
darkness is different from the life in the light of day—but not in
a bad way. The energy is different, the people who are most alive at
night are different, and human interactions are different, and in
many ways more authentic. She compared the nights at Dante's with the
sacrament of Holy Communion, saying, “Sometimes I wondered if it
even mattered whether our communion cups were filled with consecrated
wine or draft beer, as long as we bent over them long enough to
recognize each other as kin.”
All
too often we keep our spiritual life and our regular life separate,
as though the two had no relationship to one another. We go to our
respective places of worship on Sabbath, say the prescribed prayers,
sing the chosen hymns, and then we walk out the doors to a wholly
different existence. Somehow or other, we leave behind the sacredness
and sense of the holy we experience in worship, to live in a profane
world, without realizing the two exist together as part of one whole.
We can as easily meet God in a bar or a parking lot in the middle of
the night, as in our sanctuary rituals in the light of day.
Last
night, my friend, Anna, and I walked a couple of city blocks to a
restaurant in downtown Birmingham. She is a great lover of the night,
of the energy and excitement that arises when the sun goes down and
the streetlights come on. I am a daylight person, early to rise,
early to bed. I watched her aliveness kick up a notch or two as we
walked. A few years ago, downtown Birmingham was an abyss, where no
one went unless they had to, in daylight or in darkness—the
terrible legacy of fire hoses and police dogs. It had been the scene
of so much brutality and anguish, that going there conjured up fear
and trepidation. Today, thanks to the efforts of many dedicated
people, Birmingham is as alive at night as in the daytime. Many
people live downtown. Last night, folks were walking dogs and talking
with neighbors. I thought of Barbara Brown Taylor's Dante's days, and
communion over draft beer.
What
matters most is that we find each other, and we allow God's presence
to fill our night-time streets and our daytime lives. Everywhere and
at all times, God's world is sacred ground.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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