A Different World

It's warm out. Everyone is out along Chicago Avenue and it's side streets. I went into the meeting feeling I was a resident of the neighborhood, where my church will be moving. I left feeling like I was in a different world, just one mile south of where I use to live. I think what overwhelms me about the boundary of Chicago to Grand, Kedzie to Pulaski is the randomness of it all. There are so many people on the street, and so many random acts of movement and stimulation that it's hard to get an easy feeling. You don't know where to look, but everywhere. It's not fear, maybe confusion, then fear, of the unknown. You just don't know what is going on and why it's going on. My church will be moving shortly to the intersection of Grand and Division, the literal intersection intersection of "race and poverty", as my pastor puts it, between black and Latino. Straddling that line is going to be work for me, but it's where our church needs to engage and where I'm preparing to engage. We can't fall over too deep, one way or the other. Right now, I fall to the north of Grand. I much prefer the area north of Grand Avenue. At least it's randomness I can wrap my head around.