Grace and the Gridplan

When I got off the train last night from work, a voicemail from Jer popped up on my iPhone. He was calling from our local police station because he had been mugged, beaten up, robbed, but was generally OK, thank God. The police had come quickly to take his story, listen to witnesses, drive around looking for the group of teens who had done it, and have the paramedics make sure Jeremy was OK. Jer has a black eye, scraped up nose, and sore arm. We cancelled the credit cards and the kids only got $15 in cash plus a $40 Metrocard. We've said many times in the past 24 hours, "It could have been much worse."

This happened on our corner -- well lit and full of people -- around 6:30 PM. This happened on the corner that we will have to walk past many times a day for several years, often alone, because walking around corners alone is how you get around in this city.

This morning I stayed home for an extra hour, but then had to walk past that corner to the train and on to a meeting for work. My routine now involves listening to a podcast as I walk and wait for the subway. I recently remembered that House of Mercy's sermons are available as podcasts and by coincidence (maybe) I had just downloaded sermons starting back around the time we moved to NY. I listened to my first one this morning -- it was from 8/17/08, one of the last ones we had heard Debbie give. In it she describes a crazy tour guide in New York City who questions the city's gridplan, and talks about suffocating notions of family, honor, and trangressions in first century Palestine. She also beautifully, passionately describes how God's love is not limited by any human constucts of what and who are right, wrong, in or out.

I cried listening to this sermon while riding the train. I needed to be reminded of the things Debbie talked about, the mercy, especially today. I needed to be reminded about things bigger than me, and Jer, and police, and street corners, and teenagers with shitty life circumstances and anger and fear or whatever compels one person hurt another. Thank you, Debbie, and thank God for bringing me back home for a few minutes this morning. Jeremy is going to be alright, and so am I.