Today's Sermon

On an errand, I traveled from Jersey City to Newark yesterday via the PATH train, which clatters along above ground from Journal Square (where I got on) to Newark-Penn Station (where I got off). Observing the bleak, industrial landscape between the two cities--composed of derricks, tanks, factories and what look like giant Erector Sets--I tried not to have a stereotypical reaction. Instead of focusing on the ugliness, I tried to appreciate the complexity of it all. Instead of critiquing the rusted girders and peeling billboards, I looked around and beyond them, at the trees that grow, defiantly, between the shabby warehouses and at the green hills that form a soothing backdrop in the distance. You can find nature and beauty anywhere if you're of a mind to look.