WHAT FALLS APART IS ALWAYS AND IS NEAR

I am sitting in my studio at the Loft Literary Center in downtown Minneapolis. For the last several minutes, I have heard a banging outside. Rhythmic, senseless.  There’s a lot of construction going on in this part of town, and I was writing an essay about nervous breakdowns, so I didn’t pay much attention to it. The essay centers on a parishioner in the Bronx named Anne who had a breakdown after her partner of a dozen years died and my visits to her in the locked psychiatric ward of Jacobi Hospital.  She and her partner had raised parakeets for years, and she was worried about how they would fare while she was locked up.  Would they be there when she came back?  Would they welcome her?   She was in her late 50’s at the time, and felt like her whole life was on shaky ground; her whole reality was not secure.

But then the rhythm varied, and I sought some sense of it.  I looked out the window to see that the first section of the Metrodome, directly across from my window has a big hole in it.  The pounding, banging noise was an old fashioned wrecking ball tearing down this half-billion dollar beast not yet 40 years old.  The Metrodome is obsolete; a new billion dollar stadium will rise from its ashes—or from the dust of its smashed concrete, to be precise.  The way the dome was constructed, it was not a candidate for implosion, our culture’s favorite 4^th of July method of bringing big things down.

I could call to mind several obvious connections between the destruction of the Metrodome’s world and the demolition of Anne’s moorings, the hinges of her life.  I could talk about how we always seem to find money to build playgrounds for the rich and their fans (I’m one of them) who pay to have them disappoint, while never finding enough money to provide adequate health care for those who are not rich.  I could talk about how the passes of the wrecking ball remind me of passes by various Viking quarterbacks, including a few that sure seemed to be ducks. Birds, wounded, like Anne’s parakeets.  I could talk about how everything is fragile and everything can be knocked down in our lives:  our monuments, our minds, the people we love.

But I think there may be some connections that are not so obvious, for why do I keep going to the window to look while I am writing this.  What are they? 

There is a bright winter sun today, and I cannot look long to the south to observe the demolition.  In my calling as a pastor, I am witness—and sometimes guide—to people suffering various demolitions.  Thankfully, I am also witness—and sometimes guide—to their resurrections.  The Metrodome will not be resurrected, it will be replaced.  Anne was resurrected.   That is why I trust that we humans will outlive our machines and our monuments.  I hope that that is the beginning of wisdom.

Be beauty.  Be justice.  Be hope for resurrection.

Patrick