Blogging Through the Seasons

I am sitting on the train back to Queens when I see it. I’m visiting New York City for Christmas, and it’s my first time here, so naturally I want to see as much as I can in one trip. I don’t travel alone in the city most days; typically, I’m accompanied by a cousin or other family, but today I want an adventure to Bryant Park to see the holiday shops and look at the large Christmas tree. I haven’t been feeling very Christmas-y anyways. I am away from my typical palm tree winters and traded them for snow and temperatures well below 70 degrees. Despite the Christmas setting and the beautiful lights of New York City, it still didn’t feel like Christmas. In fact the only consistent thing I’ve noticed while being here is how solitary it can be on such an overpopulated island. No hellos, no smiles, and definitely no eye contact. They just mind their own business and do their own thing. Which brings me to the train. . . .

The reign of God comes whenever the good news breaks through. It comes whenever a child feels accompanied, whenever a peasant girl believes that she is worthy. Salvation comes whenever the hungry are fed good things, and the rich turned away empty-handed, whenever the poor are empowered or the mighty made to share. The world is redeemed every time an outsider is treated with reverence, an immigrant is welcomed, an abuse victim respected. The new world dawns when a person who has been silenced speaks, or when you give light and space to a vulnerable place in your heart.

My leg muscle began to twitch.  Sitting on the cement floor with just a few fabric fibers of the barely distinguishable woven mat between me and the cold surface, I tried to stretch my cramped muscles without pulling out of the side-seated position required of females in Lebanon.  “Don’t move, don’t move!” I kept telling myself, knowing that if I did fall out of the tight-packed circle of nearly 20 people in the “house” no bigger than a 10×15-foot enclosure, that I’d upend the meager yet precious amount of food sitting mere inches away from my toes, the only food that the family would consume for Iftar on that Ramadan night.  The only food that they had in the house, period.