City Of God 29

If the city of God is to become real in our midst, if we are going to gain access, then we have to start from where we already are. There is no other way. It isn't just that our current city and experience of the city and of co-existing with unsympathetic humans is a rehearsal. This is it. The Eternal City is already in our midst. We are in it. Even if we don't see it. It isn't that we need a certain code or password to gain entrance. Each person here is the code. Each one of us is the password. Even in difficult and unpleasant neighbourhoods, such as where I live, and maybe even especially because of such difficult and unpleasant neighbourhoods. All the human need and misery at my doorstep is for me a reminder of our humbled and lowly state as humans, something we all share in common. We are all born in pain and weakness. We all die in pain and weakness. And during our eighty-plus years on this planet we all shit and stink the same. Does this suggest that the City of God is really quite debased and lacking in anything special. The City of God, rather, is the invisible reality that holds us altogether, and we are like fetuses in utero. We are all in a state of preparation and the outcome has yet to be seen. I have no theological perspective to contribute here, because for me it is all a mystery. Meanwhile, we coexist. This is one of the most difficult and poorly understood dynamics of being human, or should I say, how we get along, or fail to get along. There is something innately and uniquely human about the way our mutual contact, and conflict, help shape and form us. It is through one another that we actually become truly human. It is in one another that we each and all exist. It is through others that we come to know ourselves and in the faces of others that we come to know and remember each of us our true and unique human face. There is no other way. Even here in Canada where there is a marked preference for solitude and living alone, we exist as a community, or as communities within communities within communities. Here in the apartment building where I live, it is impossible to avoid other tenants, unless I decide to shun using the elevator and the laundry room, but I still have to encounter my neighbours from time to time at the front door of the building. instead of avoidance, I try to be friendly, and it often works. We will chat a little bit, then leave each other alone. We do need to be left alone, often, I think. But we also need to connect. By the same token there are the tenants in the building next door, another subsidized facility that houses people with histories of street homelessness. There is one man who coughs a lot, and loudly. It is annoying of course, when it is chronic, and I have never met this individual, nor do I know anything about his medical history or condition. I think he does it now, partly for attention, though I am sure there are legitimate health issues. I used to get annoyed, and would shut my window to block out the sound. I still get annoyed, but last night, when he started again, I called to him: "You sound like you're dying. Are you alright?" He immediately went quiet and just coughed quietly, then I didn't hear him at all. Then there is the young man whose window almost faces mine, though it's a couple of floors lower. I was wondering if he was trying to get my attention, then one day, he was lying by his window on his bed, naked and leaving nothing to the imagination. Of course I didn't signal interest and even a few days later he seemed to be calling to me and I ignored him. Things have calmed down since, and there are some calls for attention that I simply refuse to dignify. on the street, as I step outside the building there is the usual parade of human indifference. One young idiot nearly ran me over on his skateboard, and would have had I stepped outside just a second sooner. I caught up with him as he was waiting for the light to change and told him calmly and assertively. He seemed to get it. Others are just too focussed on their smartphones to even know where they are. There are beggars on the sidewalk, of course, and even though I don't give them money, I still try to acknowledge them. There are also the various shops and services, none of which being of the variety that can help facilitate community. If anything does show itself here, it is the raw undisguised humanity that we all share in common, that also brings us together, whether we know it or not, and whether we like it or not. It isn't that people on this block are more damaged than others. We simply don't make an effort to lie about the damage and woundedness that binds us altogether and that every human on the planet shares in common.