On going back.

I've just returned from the last in a series of trips back to New York City. The first was to lead a long-planned Eucharist and preach for the New York Diocesan Daughters of the King. The second was to chair a meeting of the Board of the House of the Redeemer. And the third was to be with a clergy group which meets monthly for lunch and a presentation. All this between Sept. 26 and today, Oct. 6, about a week and a half.

The trips were superficially quite similar. First get to the Poughkeepsie train station, a trip made easier now by a new shuttle bus every two hours or so from Highland, about 4 miles down the road from the monastery. Then the always-beautiful 90 minute (more or less) train ride to the City, then to the destination. And the reverse coming back.

The DOK program was at St. Edward's, so I stayed there. I have left my furniture in the rectory apartment for David Bryan Hoopes, OHC, who is the interim priest there, and who has invited me to use the guest room when I come to the City. So there I was, back again. Same church, same altar, same sacristy, same parish hall space for the lunch, same people, the usual food. It all seemed the same. Except for me. A strange feeling.

The second trip was for the first meeting of the House of the Redeemer Board since my move. Many people didn't understand that I had already moved, and some of them don't know what OHC and the Monastery really are. Distance has made the frequent contacts I had with the House and its staff rarer, and the dynamic has changed. I can't give it the same attention I did when I lived just 14 blocks north. I've been President of the Board for 4 years, and so I indicated it might be time to think about someone else for next year's election, as I will have served 5 years. It was all fine, but subtly different. Then I had dinner with Carl Sword, a member of OHC who lives and works in NYC, and stayed overnight with him. A different space than I was used to, and dramatically New York -- the light from the top of the Chrysler Building shone into the window all night. Then a walk up Third Avenue to Grand Central -- the same trip but a different context.

And then today. A congenial group, some of whom had got the message, others of whom had not. All of them friends, the event in a familiar place, but then afterward, instead of back to 109th Street and the familiarity of St. Edward's rectory, it was off to the train station and back up the Hudson to my new home. And then, waiting at the Park and Ride in Highland and realizing gradually that there had been a mixup. Perfectly understandable, and actually the wait was enjoyable -- fresh air, quiet, a chance to read. But after almost an hour the beginnings of a sense of abandonment. I wasn't abandoned, of course. I called and one of the brothers quickly and kindly picked me up -- the misunderstanding was eventually cleared up, and here I am, home at last and safe and sound and comfortable typing this blog entry. I think this experience was slightly dislocating, bringing up feeling of possible abandonment because leaving things behind was the theme of the day.

I was asked to help represent the Order at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Detroit in 1988. General Convention is quite wonderful for about three days, as one sees old friends and renews acquaintances and so forth, but about the middle of the 10 day meeting the joy diminishes and the tedium begins. So I jumped at the chance some friends offered to drive to East Lansing and see Michigan State. I had graduated in 1969 and had not returned in 19 years. We arrived and I went from place to place, still physically much the same as when I had been an undergraduate. But of course it was all changed. The classroom where I had studied Milton with Prof. Lawrence Babb was still there. But I was different and Babb was long gone, I'm sure. We went to 525 M.A.C. Avenue, Beal House, a cooperative I had lived in for two years and been president of as a Senior. I knocked on the door and a young woman answered. There was a change! I told her who I was and she invited me in and I looked around. The living room still had the same very red carpet that seemed old when I was there many years before. She, however, looked at me like some old fossil returned to life. So I gave her a little money for beer for the members of the house (she was pleased), thanked her and was on my way.

It was like being a ghost. I was there but I wasn't there. Certainly not as I once was. St. Edward's and New York City aren't like that yet, and I hope they never will be. I want to have an ongoing relationship with both. But it will be different. It will be based in the present, not a memory but a reality. How do those I have left in New York feel about me? How does anyone feel when change happens and relationships shift and people move? There is sadness as well as joy in change, even change that happens for positive reasons. And I realize how much love I still have for St. Edward's, for the Redeemer, for the group.

But, still, the feeling on these visits was already beginning to seem akin to the visit to MSU. I know that as I live into my new life here, their reality will change, but I want it to be real. I don't want to wait years and then go back as a revivified fossil!

One of the disciplines of contemplative and monastic spirituality is to be in the present moment -- not drifting into memory or imagining the future but concentrating on the reality of now. The past is gone. We can rearrange our memories mentally, and that can be useful and even therapeutic. But the physical reality is tougher, and has changed and kept right on without us. It can never be the same again. One mark of being spiritually alive, I think, is to love the past, but to live in the present. I certainly understand that better today.