Snow

So I was under the impression that Buffalo got a lot of snow in the winter. This winter, it has had a lot of...sunshine. Rather like an iceberg in Florida, or finding penguins in Hawaii. Today was actually my first day driving to my internship in the middle of a snow storm. My only other chance, so far, was squelched when I got the day off. What is more, I had a miserable time parking and spent twenty minutes going in circles.

Which is all to say, I love the city. Not necessarily Buffalo, because Buffalo firmly believes it is a city when it is turning into a large town. Or was turning into one, before people starting moving back. There is something glorious, however, about a city in foul weather. No one honks you when you take extra long at the stoplight. Or when you start breaking half a block from the stoplight. People, complete strangers, start joking with you about the lousy weather and how much they hate Mother Nature.

I fear I am more of an extrovert than I have ever wanted to admit. A dreamy, abstract, theoretical extrovert, otherwise called an introvert on people drugs. I really like being surrounded by people, though to be honest the population density is about like what it is at home.

Oh, right, my internship. Well, the long and short of it is that today was project preparation and site visits. I am working out a method, which is always fun. And I get to go exploring every single day. See new stuff. See old stuff. Well, old for America. I noticed today that churches come in clusters, not denomination. For instance, the nine hundreds block of Delaware has two Presbyterian churches (a real sad case of church split a hundred years ago), a Hellenic Orthodox church, the former chapel of the Catholic bishops, now Blessed Sacrament Parish, a Baptist church, and two I didn't get to. Within a block, that is incredible diversity. The question is, why did everyone bury the hatchet and live next door to each other? Or did they?

Another Week

Another week come and gone. My internship is taking off. I've visited quite a few churches by now. Some have proved beautiful, such as First Unitarian Curch on Elmwood. Some were made ugly by neglect and misuse, such as Faith Temple, which is a quaint wooden church on Rhode Island Street that is in woeful need of a coat of paint. Some I can never imagine having been beautiful, like the Swedish Evangelical Church/Inglesias de Dios El Shaddai, which despite being well maintained is a drab, industrial, nineteenth century construction. I would be interested to research how homeland notions of aesthetics affect immigrant churches. Are you turning your back on a tradition, or seeking to keep the familiar in the new land?

I returned to that house I was wrecking the other day. Today, I got to rip nails from wood and strip wallpaper. I also did a lot of cleanup. Who knew wallpaper was so messy? I also ate quite a few donuts and muffins, and drank unholy amounts of coffee.

I saw a phenomenal play in Houghton tonight. It was Godspell, basically Hippies Meet Jesus. However, the deep, solemn chant "long live God," done very dirge-like and almost monastically easily made up for the neon colors and weird accents. A quite good replay of an earlier generation's attempt to accommodate culture in the church.

DESTROY DESTROY

Yeah, so I just returned from pulling a ceiling down with a pretty awesome tool.  It was rather like a legionary's spear, but got wider at the tip and had a round divot at the other end.  Oh, and after we were done with the ceiling, we ripped up the floor.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is manliness.  I was, of course, doing it for work-study, but in reality it is so maddeningly fun to destroy stuff that I would have paid to rip that house apart.

In other news, I'm finally doing site visits for my internship.  A childhood spent following my dad around on building inspections came in handy the past two days.  I knew what to look for - the cornice detaching, loose shingles, holes in the windows, cracks in the foundation, water damage, anything looking out of place or crooked.  It feels really good to be out on my feet, taking pictures of things and then returning to an office to analyze them.  Whatever I end up doing for a career, it had better include time inside and time outside.

Of course, there are some downsides to every positive week.  I deleted an hour's worth of work while in the act of saving the spreadsheet.  That was about the most depressing thing of the week.  And I almost crashed a car into a line of bushes, mostly because I had a foot of dust on my glasses and was too busy yapping my jaws off.  Nonetheless, this has been a pretty awesome past few days. 

A Former Convent?

Today's title comes from and email I received yesterday. I was tr ying to arrange a quick inspection for two churches so that's my boss and I could set expectations, etc. However, yesterday, true to Buffalo standards for once, was a miserable day of ice and freezing rain. So we had to reschedule. My boss said she would pick me up at "the former convent" on Wednesday.

At first, I was a bit puzzled about where the former convent was. I'm still learning Buffslop typography, you see, and the city is riddled with more churches than Jerusalem. Then, I realized that she meant the Rectory where I have been living. True, at times it's feels like a quasi-monastic establishment and I even have a crucifix in my room. True, Houghton's gender ratio is as bad as a convent. But we're not a convent.

So what is the purpose of this little tirade. I could be talking about my internship, but it's dreary right now. To fill my sudden spare time yesterday, I read The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. Hence, the monastic theme.

Brother Lawrence was that rarity, a humble and pious man. He understood human weakness, and his writing is infused with a deep sense of compassion and love. I rather wish I could study under him in person these days. He seems a truly Christ-like man. One day, I want to be like him.

Second Sunday

So I'm not much of a Pentecostal.  Nothing personal, of course, but there is something foreign about speaking in tongues that makes my ultimately High Church mind rebel.  It is a perfectly legitimate form of Christianity, but not really to my taste.  Today, I went to my second Pentecostal church in as many weeks.  It was...Pentecostal?  Also, it was fairly immigrant and therefore African, with lots of children running in the aisles and arm-wrestling on the floor.  It was a different, but refreshing, type of church.

Then I went to a coffee shop.  I rather like coffee shops, even if the coffee is overpriced.  Culture happens in coffee shops, around the little faux-antique tables, over cups of coffee.  Business deals, book deals and great ideas all have their genesis in the coffee shop. I have always wondered if I should start a church in a coffee shop...

End of Week 2

My first week of internship is over, and somehow it seems surreal to think about the past two weeks as a mere collection of 14 days.  After all, I've had enough experiences in teh past two weeks to make up for a month at Houghton or at home.  I've begun to master a new city's geography.  I know more than I ever cared to about the ugly uses people put their desacralized churches to (I mean, a loading dock, really?)

Since I last wrote, I have traveled to Houghton (Wednesday).  That morning was spent in more data collection and entry.  I made a major breakthrough methodologically (meaning I discovered how to use Google Maps on my iPad) and somehow discovered 30 churches in 4 hours.  I still haven't repeated that feat.

Then it was a quick hop down to Houghton.  Frankly, it felt weird to see people dashing about to their classes and their clubs and their lectures and their homework like ants in a beehive.  Or perhaps I was the ant in the beehive, because I knew there was order and structure to the chaos I saw around me but I was no longer a native to it.  Five weeks since my most recent semester at Houghton and already the giddiness baffles me.  Still, I got to see friends and plan a blood drive.

Thursday was a bit of a slow day.  I got dreadfully lost looking for the historical society, but other than that it was a rather nondescript day.  Class with Chuck was interesting, though, since it was about the education system in cities.  As a lifelong teacher and student, I was fascinated and repulsed by the magnitude of the problems in the city school system.  We still segregate, of course, but socioeconomic segregation may be even worse than racial segregation, since it culls the smartest and most productive into an Honors High School while the children of lower performers never get exposed to another way of life.  How do we break this cycle of social inequality?

Friday gave me no answers, though it did highlight another aspect of the problem.  The mainline, posh churches of the old downtown long ago moved out of the city.  The established middle-class churches have also moved out.  An endless cycle of start-ups and quick solutions have plagued the churches of the West Side and the East Side in Buffalo.  Some church buildings had had three to five owners since they were sold by the original congregation in the 90s.The church, in this case, look suspiciously like a governmental aid program or a microwave cure.

We went to the Irish Classical Theatre last night as well.  The play was about the IRA, I suppose, and the British, though it seemed that everyone was rather muddle about why precisely they hated each other.  It, at times, tried to present the characters as victims of their times.  But Leslie, the English private, and Patrick, the IRA vet, seem to have been catching on to the true nature of things at the end.  They weren't victims, they were potential victims.  There are very few heroes in teh world, but there are many people who must resist the seduction of being victimized.  Even when Leslie was shot, at the end, we realized that his death was a triumph in absurdity.  It was, in fact, an Absurdist play that seemed eerily coherent, like a thought that has been hovering at the edge of the brain for hours.



And today, now, is Saturday.  I slept in (for possibly the last time all semester).  I lounged the day away chatting with family, taking walks, etc.  Now I'm about to plunge into the hedonism of a game night.  

Data Entry

So I woke up this morning, yawned, looked at my clock, realized dimly that it hadn't gone off at 7...and realized I had less than an hour to get to my internship.  Naturally, I rolled over and slept for another 20 minutes.  Then I struggled awake, brushed my teeth, gulped down a piece of chocolate zucchini bread and headed out the door.  It was spraying nasty wetness outside, so I decided to take the car.

Big mistake.  Finding parking in downtown Buffalo is a bit of a trick.  There are massive parking lots everywhere, which is deceptive at first.  Parking is dirt-cheap - $3 or so.  But...it's for M&T employees ONLY, or St. Michael's Parishioners ONLY, or tenants of the little apartment complex that only we know about ONLY.  All other, normal human beings can go huddle in a puddle three streets over where the parking is $.50 an hour, with a two hour limit.

I walked in ten minutes late, but then again I had been given a range of times to come in.  I have, frankly, the best bosses ever.  I've been given enough guidance to not be lost, but this project is what I make of it.  I spent the morning researching which parishes belong to which historic buildings, and which historic buildings are now decommissioned.

Buffalo is deeply, profoundly Catholic.  There are about 2 Catholic parishes to every Protestant church, and no one Protestant denomination comes even near the mark on its own strength.  For this reason, I feel as though Buffalo is the most deeply European city in America.  The churches look like European churches.  Not the fake American Gothic Revival stuff but genuine Lombard Renaissance, etc architecture.  One, Holy Trinity RC, was copied almost exactly from similar churches in Italy.  The interior decoration was done by skilled immigrant craftsmen, often journeyman or master craftsman who continued from their work they had left behind in the Old World.

Today, the descendants have moved into the suburbs in large numbers.  The communities move out in the same direction that they settled in the cities - the Italians north, the Germans east, the Poles even more east and the Irish south.  The urban core is now inhabited by a remnant of the WASP population on Elmwood, a remnant of the ethnic neighborhoods, a large African-American population and the increasing Asian, African and Middle Eastern immigrants.

I wonder if, in fifty years, the Karen, Burmese, Nepali, Somali and Iraqi neighborhoods will look as solidly like their home countries as the German, Irish, Italian and Polish neighborhoods did.  Will we have graceful Burmese temples dotting the landscape?  Or, since so many of these new immigrants are joining non-denominational, charismatic churches, will something else develop?  Is there something intrinsic to Buffalo, something in the cold and fierce winter perhaps, that keeps the minds of the immigrant on the joys of home?  I may live long enough to find out.

Interning in Sunny Buffalo

Buffalo FINALLY has snow.  Now, usually this isn't particularly noteworthy.  The first snow comes about seven minutes after the last snowfall of the year (no, I don't exaggerate), except for this year.  There was a smattering of snow around Christmastime I'm told, and a freak storm in October, but until Saturday there was no real snow.  Even now there is only about two inches.  The wind has been really fierce, though.

My internship started today at Preservation Buffalo Niagara.  This organization is devoted entirely to preserving Buffalo's historic treasures.  Unlike other, more expansive cities such as New York City or even my native Allentown, PA, Buffalo rarely tears down old buildings.  Sure, it happens, and Buffalo is hardly a green or preservation friendly city.  However, who wants to be going to all the trouble and labor of tearing down an old building and putting up a new one when it is freezing cold outside?

Thus, churches get reused or refurbished.  A new congregation buys up the old building from a faltering one.  A charter school opens in an old German parish.  Or, in my favorite Buffalo adaptation of a church building, a swanky condominium replaces the diocesan convent.  In and among this reuse, the life of the city simply goes on without heeding the preservationist's call for history or the progressive's call for modernization.

My internship, as should be obvious, deals with churches and the historic integrity of their buildings.  As might also be obvious, I love churches for their own sake.  I am a deeply religious person fascinated by the urban church.  It seems strange that today in the minds of many evangelicals that the church is a rural, or at least non-urban, institution.  Our largest churches are all suburban megachurches, while our mainline urban parishes dwindle and other churches splinter.

And yet, on Buffalo's East Side, the life of the church continues.  The pastor at True Bethel Baptist Church, Darius Pridgen, runs an organization that is part typical African-American charismatic, part social services organization and part business.  His church buses congregants in on church buses, where they can worship in a converted shopping center or eat at a Subway.  Do not be cynical, however, for the pastor was the first person in the church to receive the training to run the Subway.  This isn't commericialized church, but a church actively engaged in commercial, social and even governmental activities.  Pridgen is a quite controversial city councilmember.

So it will be interesting to trace the past and present strengths of the urban church in Buffalo.  How have the types of churches changed over time?  What is their attitude towards church buildings and finance?  Where did immigrants settle, and how did this shape the current situation of urban churches in Buffalo?  Why are German Catholic parishes dwindling, but African-American charismatic Catholic parishes moving in to the same buildings?  Why did certain ethnic groups flee the city, and what will bring them back?

Mystery upon mystery.

Days 2 and 3: The First Flight

No, really, I've already missed a day.  Alternatively, I've learned I have to keep some sort of journal for class, starting next week.  So this might wrap into that.

Yesterday, the 10th, was a very slow day.  I woke up at 8 (early for me) and did virtually nothing but read Patrick Rothfuss until, oh, somewhere around 2.  Then I went to class - a syllabus day - and then cooked dinner.  More reading, then bed.  Wow, easily the most homebound day I've had in a while.  Alternatively, I got over my lingering cold from Christmas Break.

Today, I woke at 8 (I sense a pattern developing, but my internship will be starting then...) and then drove into Houghton.  The drive there was pretty easy.  I had a classmate in the car to talk to, and plenty of sunshine.  Then, magically, I found myself back on campus.  But I was a visitor, despite remaining a student, and had no classes.  I had even forgotten chapel was going on.

The long and short was that I found myself running into people I knew, and some I didn't even know I knew.  Everyone commented, asking why I was in.  I explained I had some meetings and SGA business to attend to. In reality, I was in because I was more than a little curious what it was like to return and smile smugly while everyone rushed off to classes.

It was downright wrong.  I'm not ready to be the guy with the car, the Kindle and the job in the city.  Or the unpaid internship and service-learning work-study in the city.  Whatever.

And then I decided to leave.  Alone.  And I decided to follow my GPS.  Alone.  It led me to a little road hardly a lane and a half wide, which was also covered in ice.  The long and short of it was that I ended up fishtailing about twenty times before finally reaching a plowed street.  But, in the end, no one died and I ended up back in Buffalo.

Day 1: Settling In

A long time ago, Celtic monks went on long journeys called peregrinatios.  The purpose of these journeys was, of course, Christian ministry of some form or another.  Sts. Boniface and Wilifrid were some of these traveling missionaries.  Like Christian explorers of earlier and later times, they did much more than evangelistic work, often involving diplomacy, what today we would call anthropological work, missionary work and simple exploration.  The point is that they left the functioning and coherent society of Celtic Christianity, which when ranked by late first millennium European standards was fairly organized.  They wandered out into the countryside, seeking the hairy barbarians of the Central European woods.  Behind them often came the governmental power of the Franks or whatever petty kinglet happened to be patronizing them at that point, spreading the fledgling Western civilization.

This was a civilization to countryside shift.  Western civilization has retained its admiration for those who desire to leave the organization of civilization in order to achieve something lasting and beautiful in the countryside.  It was with similar impulses that the founders of Houghton College pulled out of the developing cities of Western New York - Buffalo and Rochester - in order to found a refuge of Christian piety far away from the degrading city.  Similarly, Henry David Thoreau personifies this emphasis on returning to nature, of leaving behind the decadence and depravity of the urbanized life in order to protect an inner spirituality.

However, my personal journey is different.  I grew up in a small town quickly being enveloped in the suburbs. I was caught between a rural life that flourished at times only five miles from town, and an urban life that flourished eight miles north of town.  When it came time to go to college, I chose through a variety of circumstances a college in the middle of the cow pastures.  I was living the Thoreau dream, or perhaps the Peregrinatio dream.

All very well, but is this truly the necessary shift in Christian piety?  Is the countryside always better?  Are cities decadent and corrupt?  I remember throughout my first two years at Houghton feeling a deep sense of relief and enjoyment when I saw the lights of Allentown or Bethlehem and remembered there was more to life than cows and hay and students.  I remember grasping at the conveniences of suburban and urban life - quick access to groceries, music and culture.

So this semester I'm studying in Buffalo.  I'm doing an internship for a historic preservation organization working on preservation efforts in historic churches.  I'm living in the city, driving in the city and working in the city.  I don't really know what to expect, but I know that whatever happens it will be different from my past few years.  Feel free to journey along with me.