Saturday, January 16, 2010

Places Called Home

“We had come home and if home was not what we had expected, never mind, our need for belonging allowed us to ignore the obvious and to create real places, or even illusory places, befitting our imagination.”Maya Angelou

Her husband worked at the hospital around the block from my house and said there was no such thing as a Lesser Cathedral District and she chided me for having given her faulty information as we sat having coffee. Looking out the window at passing traffic, I reflected: I knew it existed; I lived there. The neighbors all lived there. John lived under a porch there. Lorie walking through with all she owned in the bags she carried about with her was acquainted with every stray kitten there. We all knew it was so. I thought about trying to convince her that what I knew to be so was so, but – instead – I let it be. We had our coffee and she told how she once took plywood, cardboard and a steak knife and built a fireplace where there wasn’t one before. It occurred to me that a woman like that would figure out what was so on her own; she would know it was so when she saw what had been made there for herself because faith is, after all, a very tactile thing at times.
S.P.M.

2 comments:

Linsey said...

Love the begining quote- itwas made for this entry.

I may not have a residence in the Cathedral District but I do spend a lot of time here, and us as a community, create this amazing place that many may not understand at first. Hopefully, with a little more love and patience, others will soon understand the love, faith, and determination that we do.

Shadow of the Cathedral said...

The place is amazing, but it can amazing is something that can take a while to sink in, and Americans a a people aren't noted for patience, lol. But that doesn't mean we should quit dragging strangers into the neighborhood and leaving them there to think.
SPM