New Year

NEW YORK CITY - January 1, 2010 -- Happy New Year.

What a wonderful way to start the new year: at a church service at Calvary Baptist Church on West 57th Street, just across the street from Carnegie Hall.

I saw a few familiar faces. But it’s been 21 years. Gone is the senior pastor, Don Hubbard. In his place is Rev. David Epstein. He’s Kathy Lee Gifford’s brother but he doesn’t look a thing like her. Or act like her.

Walking in, I stopped and just looked. At the pews, the podium up front, the choir loft up above that. A wave of emotions hit me. This is where Lois and I attended for over three years. It’s where we began our Christian walk, helped by some extremely good teaching on Sunday mornings. We'd been starved for something real and the cult we’d been members of wasn’t it.

I sat in the pew where she and I always sat, on the second row right on the aisle. She was a spirit-filled flashy blonde and enjoyed showing off. And I enjoyed showing her off. Some of the blue-haired ladies looked with askance. She was covered, actually more than some of the t-and-a shows I see in some churches. But dang did she know how to strut!

After services tonight, I walked almost all the way back up to my hotel on the Upper West Side. The temperature was mild, 34 degrees. No wind. A gentle mist coated the streets with a light sheen. I flashed back to an ABC radio show in the 50s called “Imagination” with Milton Cross. I was working in radio while I was in high school in Southern Oklahoma and heard his word pictures and yearned for a piece of whatever that was in New York City.

Tonight, I looked all around me and realized how much I love New York City. Much more than Berlin. As I walked, the mist became fog and the tall buildings along upper Broadway were magically shrouded in a coat of gray. It was a painting come to life. And even though it was New Years Eve, it was calm. Peaceful.

Peaceful, yet exciting at the same time.

I popped into the Europa Deli at Broadway and 70-something and had a large coffee and a toasted bagel with cream cheese. Wonderful way to welcome the new year.

Would I like to live here again? Yes.

Am I going to pursue it? No.

It’s gotta pursue me. But if it does, well, we’ll see.
Copyright 2010 James C. Lewis