Urban Vacation -- And Lessons Learned Along the Way

If you've happened to be following our blogs (or facebook) for the past week or so, you know that our family has just enjoyed a wonderful, 8-day vacation to our nation's east coast. Amy has already written very well about what we've done -- I'd love for you to check out her description of what we did day by day here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. She does a nice job summarizing the highlights of each day -- lots of museums, monuments, restaurants, and just an all around good time together as a family.

Hailey, in Philly, 2014

Hailey, getting her first glimpse of NYC.

The idea for this trip began in the mind of our oldest daughter about three years ago. In 2014, I led a team from Sunnyslope Church to work alongside of a sister church in northeast Philadelphia -- this was the third year in a ministry partnership in which we served, worked, and build relationships between our two churches. That year, Hailey, who was only 8 at the time, was a participant on the team, and she became enamored with urban life. She couldn't get enough of the sights, sounds, smells, and the all around busyness of the big city. And, I think she figured that if Philadelphia was that great, then NYC must be even better, given that it is larger.

Fast forward two years, and our family was putting together our application for a Lily Foundation grant that would cover the expenses for our Sabbatical. Lily wanted creative ideas that would "make the pastor's heart sing." For our family, that meant a 14-day trip to some of the major cities along the eastern coast -- Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. In each place, we'd spend time learning together, and discussing the various elements of culture, and how we experienced cultural expressions in each stop along the way.

Alas, Lily wasn't quite singing the same tune as we were, and my grant application was declined (many are -- it's a tough grant to get, as they offer up to $50,000 per pastor!). Needless to say, we were all a little disappointed, but I think Hailey took it the hardest. So, we decided to take another look at our plans, and we figured we could still tackle a scaled back version of our planned adventure. (In retrospect, this may have been much better -- I was ready to come home after 8 days!). 

So to that end, we spend 8 days exploring two great cities -- their political institutions, their cultural treasures, and their culinary masterpieces. It was everything from world-class paintings at the Met & the Smithsonian art collection, to the history of the Native Americans at the Museum of Natural History, to eating food from street vendors and famous restaurants (as well as a few stops at McDonalds...). We enjoyed every mode of transportation, from the airlines, to Amtrak, to the Subway, to Lyft & Uber, to the old-fashioned mode of getting around using the two feet God gave us.

Hailey probably gets it from me -- I love cities too. They represent, I think, the best and the worst in our world, in that they are microcosms of humanity. At their very best, cities are generative places -- they encourage creativity and production. Cities have fostered the very best in art, science, technology, and government. As we toured the Ellis Island museum, we learned of the hundreds of thousands of people who left everything behind to sail for distant shores, all for the hope of a new life. Many left religious persecution, hoping to find the freedom to worship; others left devastating economic conditions, hoping for the chance to find success and prosperity in the new world; still others left behind war for a land that promised peace. In many ways, the cities of America offered this, and many neighborhoods in New York (and in most other major American cities) trace their beginnings back to particular ethnic groups who docked in New York Harbor. The growth and prosperity of New York in the 1930's is still a monument to the hard work, ingenuity, and cultural development embraced by the immigrants. We spent time on Wednesday evening on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building in midtown Manhattan -- a building that was completed in 1931, and was a feat of engineering and design unthinkable at the time. The boom of skyscrapers in New York (and many other American cities) in the 1920s and 30's was owing to a rather unremarkable technological innovation known as the Bessemer Process by which impurities in steel are removed so that the steel is strengthened in order to bear the immense load of these buildings. Relatively simple technology -- but a discovery that literally changed the landscape of our country as we know it.

Importantly, cities aren't just about industry and commerce, but about art as well. Our youngest is a budding artist, and so we made sure that she had the chance to enjoy some world-famous art museums. Cities both curate and produce the arts, and the arts both reflect and shape the culture of the cities they are in. A personal highlight for me was our stroll through the European renaissance paintings in the collection at The Met. The works on display included pieces by Seurat, Van Gogh, Matisse, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Picasso, Monet, Manet, and my personal favorite, Rembrandt. These paintings reflect the the rise of humanism in the 16th century, a period that emphasized the beauty and the glory of the human body (we had to explain this particularly as we encountered the many nude paintings and sculptures!), as well as the place of both biblical and mythical stories. It is always instructional to walk through a gallery chronologically -- and to then observe the changes in subject, style, and tone. By the time we were in the contemporary exhibit, we were asking questions like, "What is that supposed to be?" or "Don't you think that I could paint that?" Of course, these paintings reflect a cultural change -- the loss of absolutes, and the growth of nihilism. The beauty of cities is that they are seedbeds for such cultural development.

Jacob Riis' photos from the tenements

But if you've spent any time at all in cities, you know that they are not just places of cultural flourishing; they are equally places of deep brokenness as well. One of the inventions that became the impetus for some of the greatest social change of the early 20th century was the camera flash (think of that the next time you take a photo in the dark!). Due to the high demand for fashion, and the widespread availability of immigrant labor, as well as the complete lack of any form of labor laws, many immigrants lived in absolute squalor. Women and children worked in garment factories for 15 hours a day, and lived crammed into tenements where unsanitary living conditions led to untold disease, and death, much of which was never brought to light for the world to see. That is, until Jacob Riis, a Danish immigrant and journalist began using the newly-invented flash photography to, quite literally, expose the unlivable conditions that many New Yorkers were living in. This "muckraking" journalism became the prompting for great social change. There were many other factors of course, (including the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, and many other factors which I've omitted here -- I've simplified this greatly!)  but that was a key movement for change. Cities today remain broken because they are comprised of sinful human beings. 

Interestingly, we had the chance to see how things like art, commerce, and human brokenness can coalesce. These photos were taken near Wall Street. One is the long-standing "Charging Bull", a bronze sculpture representing the financial power of Wall Street, and "Fearless Girl", a newly-placed sculpture that represents the growing presence of women in the corporate and financial worlds. Art here serves to reflect the values of the present world, while at the same time challenging those same values. 

Our vacation did allow us the chance to see the brokenness of cities, and seeing is important. Walking through the halls of the US Capitol, or the White House (both of which we were privileged to obtain tickets for!) I thought of the immense privilege and responsibility that come with power. We easily complain -- and protest (which we witnessed too!) most certainly holds a valued place in a democracy -- but we who live in America do have much to be grateful for. At the same time, these halls of power have also been home field for some of the greatest scandals and tragedies of the modern era. Whether it was Watergate, Lewinskygate, or more recent events (judge for yourself which events are boons, and which are blessings-- this blog isn't meant to be political!), our cities remind us that there is much wrong with the human race, much in need of rescue. This came to me most vividly as we visited the holocaust museum, a sobering witness to the human capacity for great, great evil, and perhaps just as sobering, our capacity for complicity in the face of such evil. And of course, the 9-11 museum bore yet another painful witness to the power of evil.  This museum in lower Manhattan describes and heart-rending  detail the events of that terrible Tuesday morning.  Our kids really had little idea of what 9-11 was about, and so this offered us the chance to walk them through what happened -- the sounds, and sights were hard to bear. A good friend of mine -- and a New Yorker -- reminded me that these events are still a very fresh wound in the heart of many New Yorkers. The wounds of a city, the wounds of a culture.

It's no small thing, to me, that the biblical picture of heaven is nothing less than a city.  A perfectly cultivated, perfectly cultured city.  A city healed of its wounds, and rescued from its brokenness. A city where the nations are gathered together in ways that complement rather than divide. I blog much more on this theme over at intersect, so I won't revisit too much of that here. But the world that begins as a garden -- an untended, unfinished space, brimming with potential is brought to its apex -- a city, in which the treasures of the nations are brought. And so, this vacation was -- in my eyes, at least! -- a chance to gain a glimpse into who we are called to be, what we are called to do, and what, by grace, we one day will be.