Six Streets of Separation

Today's walk started in West Park.  I walked along the bike path, passing some graffiti and litter along the way.

I felt very uneasy walking here, a feeling that was ramped up when I passed a man eating his lunch on a rock near the creek.  As far as I know, he was simply eating lunch, but my mind played the scripts from episodes of Law & Order, Bones, and CSI so I walked quickly to get back onto a main street.

I turned West, and saw some more graffiti, 

A Flight for Life helicopter, 

and the remains of an old bridge.

Asking that my feet be as Christ's feet, my heart as Christ's heart, my eyes as Christ's eyes and my lips as Christ's lips, I began to encounter the neighborhoods, and I saw children.  A small boy who pet my dog, and taught me the sign language for dog and cat.  A preteen girl asking to pet my dog and what his name is.  Three girls in pink playing across a sidewalk, too polite to speak to me.  Teenage boys playing basketball and hollering insults at one another.  A small child and her grandmother out for an afternoon bike ride.  Five boys sitting on the sidewalk seriously involved in a conversation.  A woman getting a toddler out of a car.  Another woman crossing the street holding the hands of two girls in pink, one of whom waved at me. 

The idea of God's Kingdom, a prayer for the success of my husband's church, and the Lord's Prayer connected with this Scripture: "'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.  I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.' And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them." (Mark 10:14-16)

These things bring me back to the first moments of my walk, when the litter, graffiti, and overgrown shade of the bike path had caused me some fear.  The wild places I loved as a child were about as unlovely, but I never encountered them with fear.  They were places of adventure, discovery and imagination.  I did not have a notion then of pretty or ugly, affluent or run-down, good or bad.  I did not make assumptions; I did not judge.  I experienced places and filled them with the best of my own spirit, rather than the worst suspicions of someone else's mind.  May I strive to encounter Mason City in that childish way. 

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