Resurrection

After the choice to die, after the death, after the vigil, there is resurrection. Like new grass growing through old, cracked sidewalks, or new flower bushes and trees from the skeletons of burned down crackhouses, resurrection is better than the original; it has discarded what was meaningless and become beautiful.

What strikes me in church on Easter is the beauty. Whether in women's dresses, and small kids suits, or in the sisters' chapel, now adorned with fresh flowers and bows, resurrection is beauty. Beauty I could see on Gladstone st. in Detroit, where the empty lots had fields of purple flowers and broken mansions had vines and trees protruding from the strangest places. So much better than the new northern suburbs with their coffin- like row houses, plush, sealed, and completely, identically, comfortable.

I'll never forget the brightly painted, slightly sagging row houses in Camden; orange, red, and blue, or the mosaics of street art on the sides of corner stores.

This unconventional, reborn beauty, has a different set of values that the old, pre death world. Instead of status, neat, orderly, wealth, sex, and power, we have an inverted world, a bigger perspective. Blessed are the ...... poor, the meek, the mourning, the man who locks up the corner park every night and chases away the drug dealers, the pastor who visits her flock of drug addicts in under- street tunnels, the surgeon who spends his retirement fixing Congolese fistulas.

This beauty is what I want. If I would have had a nice, cookie cutter, normal childhood, and had obtained a practical bachelors degree and gone straight into a marriage and career and suburban house, I would not have attained it. Despite all the retirement cruises and safaris, I would know that I was deeply, comfortable, vacum- packed, white, and grey. As it is, I am, despite the flies, and the latrine, and the rabid dogs, and the dusty, muddy, dirty, dirty feet-- colorful, resurrected!