Since this is presumably my final year in New York (right, God?  RIGHT?), I’ve issued a command to myself: stop crying over spilled piss (aka sidewalk paint) and focus on the things I love about the city.  The things I can’t find anywhere else.   Hopefully the pendulum won’t swing too far in the opposite direction, making me want to stick around indefinitely.  But I don’t feel there’s much danger of that.  So here’s to my exercise in positivity!  Today, I love how New Yorkers embrace tough questions, search for answers, and pursue constant challenge.  And I love Tim Keller’s preaching and how it demonstrates how life as a Christian can be all of the above.

Let me begin by saying that I detest more than anyone the reporters who flee straight from their storm-proof newsrooms to trailer parks after a tornado just so they can find a toothless racist to interview.  Same goes for documentarians who set out to expose the pro-life movement and park themselves at abortion clinics where hate-mongers spew venom at scared pregnant women.  And don’t even get me STARTED on movies that feature an actor from Connecticut whose past travel is limited to L.A., New York, and Europe yet considers his Southern accent Oscar-worthy.  I have found myself on the stand countless times, defending Southerners and people of faith (more often than not, a redundant description whether sincere or not) against accusations of subhuman IQ and generalized hatred.  One such time was when I was “dating” the son of the Speaker of the House (the one who broke all the ceilings) and we were at the home of his sister, a documentary filmmaker.  Her latest subject was the religious right, and researching them had naturally taken her all over the Bible Belt.  My old stomping grounds.  She asked me if it was strange to grow up there, if I ran into crazy people all the time, if I knew anyone who went to church regularly.

“Yeah,” I replied.  “I do.”

I feel it should be a rule that no one but the people who grew up there can make fun of the South.  I love my home and so many things about it (read: fried everything.  Oh, and my family).  I hate when people reduce it to an unfair, poorly researched caricature.  I believe there are brilliant people there (just like everywhere else) and idiots there (just like everywhere else).  What I realized about myself after spending my first twenty-seven years there was that it was easy to be, and remain, a certain kind of person.  A religious conservative white person.  Four years later, I’m still that person. T.S. Eliot observed that “home is where one starts from,” but he also said that “we shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”  I haven’t made a circle and ended up in the same place I started.  But now I know why I believe what I believe rather than blindly accepting it, which I was only too happy to do before I ever left the comforts of home.  I know that resistance to change and challenge isn’t limited to one region.  And staying in the same place doesn’t mean a person will never grow.  Anyone can hide, or thrive, in their hometown.  But for me, it took leaving home to find out what I was capable of and who I could be, demographic descriptors aside.  I appreciate that New York is full of people who were willing to make that journey as well.  No one comes here to take the easy way out.

I love that here, I meet people who are from everywhere.  That they have well-worn books and passports.  That they are adventurers.  That they talk and care and know about what’s going on in the world.  That they are willing to venture underground and underwater for transportation.  That my BF will pull out my chair for me and email me the college paper he wrote on “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (guess I’m into T.S. Eliot these days).

And I love Tim Keller’s preaching.  Tim is the pastor of my church, Redeemer Presbyterian.  And he presents the Gospel like I’ve never heard it presented.  This is not s Sunday service of platitudes and feel-good cliches.  Nor is it a fire and brimstone exercise in yelling.  I grew up on, and tired of, both of those.  This message is a challenge to the intellect.  An appeal to logic.  It’s unpredictable, yet totally reliable–just like the Gospel.  He draws primarily on Scripture, then throws in movie, literature, and poetry references.  Because the Gospel is a story that is retold daily in art and culture:  sacrificing love, redemption, forgiveness, second chances.  In other words, God truly is everywhere.  And he is a lot different from the god I created when my world was small.  The Gospel I am taught here is the ultimate challenge to self, much like the city has been the ultimate challenge to myself and countless others.  I love that I’m part of two communities–New York and Redeemer–that embrace challenge and the intellectual workout that comes with it.  I landed in a place where people run toward, not away from, challenge.  I love that.