Benched #6: on the green

A grassy spot must feel so incredibly good.

I mean, if you pounded pavement all day long, what a treat it would be to have the springy give of a lawn underfoot. 

I’m not sure what I expected when I sat down on a bench along the edge of Bryant Park in Manhattan. Activity, I guess.  Not frenzied movement, but something closer to the undulating flow of people on the sidewalks that line it. 

There were spots of low-key sports – skilled ping pong players smoothly volleying, petanque players huddled over their latest throws –but they were hidden in the shadows under the trees.  Out in the open, people gathered in clusters all over the green.  Sitting.  Sleeping. Talking.  Hardly moving.  With the notable exception of one young woman who got up and, to her friends' amusement, began to twirl.

One could quickly spot the tourists.  They were the ones coming in, touching the open space just long enough to take a photo of the towering buildings around it, then ducking back out.  But it wasn’t just their restlessness in that moment that set them apart.  They were the only ones who looked up.

It struck me today that rural landscapes are horizontal; urban ones are vertical.  And yet, in both cases, it’s so easy to let the grandeur of the vista become passé.  We block it out.  I remember the first month after we moved to Lewisburg, we commented to a longtime resident as we drove along that the mountains around us were so incredibly beautiful.  She answered, slightly surprised, “Oh… yeah.  I guess you’re right.  I don’t notice them much any more.”

I can’t say that I know for a fact that New Yorkers on the lawn suddenly awakened again to the beauty of their surroundings.  But what a perfect setting for being still long enough to take it all in.

And what a perfect day.  Sunday.  Genesis tells us that on the last day of creation, God didn’t just see the individual parts as good.  He saw it all and it was very good.  That’s what a day of rest can do – give us a new perspective on what very good things we have been given.  I do believe that to enjoy life, we can’t just be tourists, pausing long enough just to take a snapshot so that on a future day we can enjoy the memory.  We need to slow down and find joy in the real version, while we have it. 

And just maybe, we'll let that joy force us to get up, feel the grass beneath our feet, and twirl a bit.

Let's just all be aware of the length of our skirts, shall we?