Franklin Avenue revisited

Father in Heaven.
Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to be still.
Paraphrasing T.S. Eliot's "Ash Wednesday" is a common practice, but in his pleading with God for peace, and for answers, he got it exactly right. At this time of the morning, I find myself laying on the couch wishing for both, though prayer sometimes eludes me.
Maybe that's because I feel too guilty about the other things I want -- or because I'm tired of hearing myself asking for the same assurances again and again.
It's easy to get inspired, to write for the church about fear and hope and how we have to rely on one another, look out for one another. It doesn't always carry through to midnight, that inspiration. Teach us to be still.

Again and again my thoughts return to today's trip over the river and back, over to the old neighborhood and back, across two bridges and a lot of history -- the city's history and the personal kind. I wonder how far I've come, and if it's far enough, or if it's too far away from where I was or where I'm called to be.

Sooner or later, water runs downhill. I told Craig today that mentally I'm never far from the riverfront, from that landscape. He asked if the bridges I took note of and rambled about were a metaphor for other relationships in the church, and I said Isn't everything really just a metaphor for everything else, if you think about it long enough? I'm not sure where I gathered that unoriginal thought and he wasn't impressed either -- worse, I've probably said it before.

In this case, there may not have been a point, had I even looked for one. How many metaphors are embodied by a bridge? Hundreds of thousands, I imagine. Just look at the word "pontiff" for example, a nice churchy word. It comes from the Latin, pont -- the bridge.
"The term derives from the French word pontife, from the Latin pontifex, a title used for high priests of the Roman Empire. The word pontifex is commonly held to derive from the Latin root words pons, "bridge" + facere, "to do" or "to make", with a literal meaning of "bridge-builder". This, however, is disputed - it may be only a folk etymology [1]. See Pontifex for more details on the original Roman term."

Leaving aside "folk etymology" for the moment, it's a common reference. Teach us to care.

Sometimes I wonder if the landscape of my life is just so small a patch that it doubles in on itself naturally and seems to become profound, for lack of genuine perspective -- or if it contains within it all that it is center of, truly. In which case, what is Franklin Avenue, or the collapsed 35W bridge, trying to tell me?