12/26/2006

Again New York

I am looking out over the Manhattan skyline from a Brooklyn Heights parsonage. I can see where the Staten Island Ferry docks, and where the Brooklyn Bridge enters Manhattan and I can see the Empire State Building further up Manhattan. Beneath the Empire State Building is the location of community church.

I am in New York until the Memorial Service for Marjorie on Saturday. My New York City visits go back to the early 1960s. I was here when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and I was part of the huge demonstration the next day, I was here for anti Vietnam war rallies, and large meetings in solidarity with the overthrown democratically elected government of
Chile. Most of my New York adventures were on the upper West Side in those days.

Later I lived a few months in Chelsea, and visited friends here frequently driving from Boston and parking in the space of a friend who lived in a co-op who had a parking space but no car.
When I meet Marjorie I got to know the East Side a little better, I would come down from Quebec and we would see the city. I remember the trip to Union Theological School for a lecture, it was cold and it involved a lot of transfers. The lecture I have forgotten, but that trip was an adventure. Marjorie travelled all over the city.

I know Boston so much better, but this city has been very much a part of my life. I will consider the next few days as if it were a pilgrimage, reconnecting with so many events over so many years.

Dec 26, 2006 9:32:00 AM | Places

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Home church Boston's Arlington Street was not my first church experience. I didn't begin to attend Arlington Street until I was nineteen. I had been part of at least four Unitarian churches before that, not counting the one I was christened in. But in those churches I was always Clyde and May's son Clyde Elliot. Arlington Street was a place where no one knew my parents, and I was one of the young people. Jack Mendelson was minister then. I was not a loyalist. I went to King's Chapel, First Church and Charles Street Meeting House. When I went to San Francisco to finish to college, I went to the Bay area UU churches. When I came back to Massachusetts in 1965 to go Crane Theological School I did my student ministry at Second Church of Boston up in the Fenway. But I always came back to Arlington Street when I had to think about my life. I first made the decision to go into the ministry there sitting in a pew. It was sitting in that same pew that i decided to leave theological school in 1966 and throw myself into trying to stop the Vietnam war. When I became disillusioned with the leadership of the Unitarian Universalist Association during the Black Empowerment Struggle in 1969 and 1970, I found folks at Arlington Street who agreed with me, and was able to "keep the faith" despite my anger with those who we had designated to lead us. For years I travelled as an organizer, kept myself busy as a justice advocate, and experienced that Arlington Street was there when I had a free Sunday, when I needed to touch base with that childhood faith that kept calling me home. Finally it was at Arlington Street all most twenty years ago now...
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Want to get a daily work out? Commute in New York Yesterday I traveled by way of the Number 3 train to 72nd and Amsterdam by subway, then walked from the subway stop over to Fourth Universalist Church (76th St and Central Park West) to pick up some items that I had lent Rosemary Bray McNatt,. I walked back to the subway and took the train to 42nd Street and then transferred over to S train and took it to Grand Central. I then walked to the Community Church at 35th and Park. I met with Janice Marie Johnson about some details for the Memorial Service for my late wife, Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley. Then I walked over to Sixth Street and got on the N to bring me back to Court Street in Brooklyn. The subways are wonderful ways of getting around the city, but the haven't been updated for ease of use, upstairs and downstairs and long corridors for transfers. I think I might have walked four miles during the course of the afternoon plus at least 12 flights of stairs. I am not in terrible shape, but not ready to hike up a mountain either — but New Yorkers do this kind of thing everyday. One can be car free in New York, get a good workout, and spend the money one would on a car on taxis when time is pressing. And save enough to retire to the Sun Belt, I can' t imagine doing those stairs for many more years. Of course I might have walked a few less steps if I had my sense of direction up and running. Marjorie always told me I could find my way anywhere, but I have found myself turned around more than once in this city. I got to corner of the 35th and Park Ave. yesterday and lo there was...