St. Paul's Chapel & Locating the Sacred: Two NYC Faith Experiences

Halfway through a busy third week of my internship year in New York, I wanted to write a real quick post about two amazingly powerful, but very different, faith experiences I had over the last two weekends.  Despite having grown up only a couple hours north in Connecticut, I never really spent much time in the city until this year... attending a taping of TRL sometime in middle school, an Iraq War protest in high school and a couple Yankees games notwithstanding, I really hadn't experienced New York very much.

St. Paul's Chapel

One of the things I always wanted to do here was to walk around Greenwich Village following all of the old Dylan related spots... cafes he played at, the street where the picture on the cover of the The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan was taken... stuff like that (I'm a huge nerd), so I set out to do just that two weekends ago, and Molly was nice enough to come along with me.  It was a pretty nice day out and we definitely had fun in the village, especially hanging out in Washington Square Park, but near the end of the afternoon we still didn't feel quite done... we wanted to experience a little more, so we decided to take a long walk down to the financial district.  While I originally intended mainly to get a picture of me fighting that golden bull statue that is somewhere near Wall Street (I think), we ended up decided to spend some time reflecting near ground zero, and that's when the faith experience started.  Given that it was the weekend before 9/11, we had little success getting tickets to see the new memorial, but we did have a chance to visit St. Paul's Chapel, an amazing place I had somehow never heard of before.  St. Paul's Chapel, part of the Trinity Wall Street Episcopal Church parish, withstood the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings across the street and ended up serving as a place of respite for rescue and construction workers, as well as an active memorial site.  Weekly worship still takes place in the space, and it continues to act as pilgrimage place for over a million folks every year.  What an amazingly powerful example of a faith community serving its community.

Alhaji Papa Susso

This past weekend, I had very different but still amazing faith experience while attending a concert in the Queen's Botanical Garden as part of the ongoing Locating the Sacred festival organized by the Asian American Arts Alliance.  It was absolutely perfect weather out... just a little cool with a breeze and surrounded by a beautiful garden I was blessed to be able to listen to traditional music from around the world.  Entitled "The Gift of Wisdom," the event featured four distinct performances: Mala Desai began with a devotional Odissi dance from India, followed by a kora performance by a lively master named Alhaji Papa Susso.  Yoon Sook Park was absolutely amazing playing the kayagum (a Korean zither) and Ikhlaq Hussain followed her up by an epic sitar performance.  The highlight of the evening though, I think, was when all of the performances came out and played together at the end of the show.  Some of the music last weekend was specifically religious in nature, some wasn't, but the best part of the event was that it helped a really diverse crowd explore what can be held up as truly sacred, no matter what faith (or lack of religious faith) one might ascribe to.  I'd highly encourage folks in the city to take part in the remainder of the festival events throughout the city this week... everything's being wrapped up by a choreographed flash mob in Washington Square Park this Sunday.

All I can say in conclusion at this point is, boy, this city if full of opportunity for dialogue and shared experience with persons of really diverse faiths and backgrounds... what an awesome blessing.

God's peace,
Dustin

Dustin is currently a vicar at the Lutheran Office for World Community and Saint Peter's Church in Manhattan, having recently completed his second year of a Masters of Divinity program at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. While seeking ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, his focus is on the intersection between worship, service and justice building in de-centralized faith communities unencumbered by a traditional church building. In his free time, Dustin likes playing frisbee, hiking and pretending to know how to sing.