Rising Higher
Updated: Jan 16
(Brooklyn Bridges, Post 1)
I find bridges inspirational. It is a visceral thing. I will jog 6 miles or more through dark streets just for the thrill of running over one of these majestic giants.
As the ground gently descends below me I am lifted up by the arch of the bridge. Soon the sounds of the city fade away and I find myself suspended some 200 feet or so above the pristine waterway. Often from this height I can see a sunrise or a sunset or the glistening night lights of the city, like a million diamonds on black satin. The view never gets old for me. The sheer grandeur lifts my spirit and mind and heart. The endorphins from the climb add to the experience. In reality and metaphorically the climb lifts me away from either side and higher. It is a place for me where the barrier between the mundane and the transcendent is particularly thin. God is closer to me there.
C.S.Lewis described my feeling well. “Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw — but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realize that this landscape means something totally different to him . . .” NYC area bridges are like that for me. Millions pass them without even noticing the view.


We all need something to lift us up from the ordinary. We need a boost to a different vantage point. For you, it might not be a bridge. It could be a leaf, the moonlight on desert sand, or the smell of your baby’s breath.
You need moments when your body, your feelings, and your spirit align to create a little thread of truth that, if tugged upon, leads you to wisdom.
For me, these transcendent moments often have to do with reconciling disparate worlds/idea/realities. Brooklyn is a place of connection and disconnection. Like the millions of other immigrants here, I am constantly living in the tension of what is here vs. what was there, this home vs. my previous home(s). It is not easy to reconcile the new me with the old me, and it is comforting to find transcendent realities. I see this struggle in the eyes of my friends here in Brooklyn. I hear it in their stories of life in rural Domincan Republic or their frustration with life in America. What I am trying to say is that wisdom comes when we let ourselves feel these tensions, when we step away from the comfortable shore and feel the dissonance of being between.
My father who was a life-long missionary and pastor for 49 years said once, “If there was an 11th commandment, it would be ‘Thou shalt have balance.’” My concrete, adolescent brain chafed at the thought that balance was such a central concept. I was in the stage of savoring radical, absolute truths worth dying for, and dad’s comment sounded soft to me. Balance? Really? Sounds lukewarm and bland to me.
The more I live and particularly in the twenty years here in Brooklyn, I see the wisdom in dad’s quip, and I see the balance in Jesus’ life. Jesus sought out those on the political and social extremities, Simon, the Zealot, Matthew, the Tax Collector, to be among his closest followers. This is like someone from Antifa and a MAGA loyalist. Jesus took the extreme ideologies of his day, and called people out of their ideological silos and into relationship. Repeatedly he encouraged people to do as the Pharisees say (Matthew 23:3), but he regularly went toe to toe with them on their commitment to the minutiae of religion. He was always calling them to a place of balance, built on the weightier matters like “love and mercy.”
This place of wisdom, of balance, this place away from the shore, is a bit mysterious. Jesus comments were flooded with nuance and don't fit well into clean dogma. When he called people, He had vastly different words to each one. To one he said, “you must be born again” to another he said to “sell what you have and give to the poor,” to others he said to “drop their nets,” and to others he said “to become like a little child.” I am convinced that the way of Jesus is a transcendent, balanced, mysterious path that is both in the middle and above, like a bridge. It is not as simple as the ideological purists would propose. His way is some unique place often in the middle of extremes but somehow above them too.
The purists, of course, are much easier to understand than Christ. With their seminars, lists, and theological texts, they try to organize a theology that is logically cohesive. They try to summarize his message into creeds. They then create denominations and schools of thought that must be defended and somewhere Jesus gets forgotten. Like Job’s friends, they bring their eloquent words to the mysteries of the day, but God straightens them out with a myriad of additional questions calling them back into mystery and personal surrender.
That is what a Brooklyn Bridge is for me, a place to get my heart and head straight, where I might not have all the answers, but I know what is true.
I hope that as we share these moments together, you can step away from the shore a bit and hear the blessing Jesus prophetically placed on you when he said, ‘Blessed are those who do not see, yet believe.” The extremes may be clearer on the shore, but I am learning to walk in a place of mysterious, transcendent balance. It is not always clear, but it is always good.
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