My family comes from South Philadelphia. And though we moved to the country in the tiny town of Gap, my brother still makes us cheer fiercely for all Philly teams. I grew up visiting my uncle and aunt there. My grandma would give us 95 cents to go round to the Rita's on the corner and get a small water ice and soft pretzel years before Rita's made it to Lancaster County. We played wiffle ball in the streets, and everybody scattered when the cars came. When I was in the play South Pacific at my high school, I remember quoting one of the lines to my mother which said, "What? Philadelia girl no saxy?" And my mother grinned wide and returned, "Oh, Philadelia girl SAXY!" Even from the country I knew, Philadelphia was our city.
But, I was driving some friends to the Baltimore airport a couple weeks ago, and was overcome with a pleasant feeling. You see when I was in high school I went there on a mission trip to work with inner city kids. Eventually we went back there again a few years later, and the love of the ministry there caused our youth group to begin a consistent ministry relationship with the Charm City Church. Looking out the windows I recounted our history there, because Baltimore was the place where God awakened my spirit to a knowledge of him. He used the people of the city to rip open my heart, and then he tinkered in the open wound until the vessel began to pump. Baltimore was the place where I learned that I was not the center of the universe. Baltimore was the place where my definition of what a great man was changed from monetary success to one willing to offer work to the homeless, and pay them in shoes because it was all he had to give. Baltimore was the place where I realized that ministering to children did not mean sharing the Gospel in fairytale form, because these children had seen too much to believe in fairy tales. Baltimore is where I heard "This Little Light of Mine" sung not as a cheerful kids song, but as a soulful declaration. Baltimore is where I knew that I had to stop wasting my life.
Perhaps there was some foreshadowing of my love affair with this place when I was just a child riding in the back seat of our conversion van on our way to South Carolina every year. Mom and Dad would wake us up in the middle of the night to begin the long drive down so that we would have the most time we could soaking up the sun and digging our toes in the sand. And though I was young, and tired, I remember fighting my eyelids for the first hour and a half of the drive because I knew that we would pass Baltimore along the way, and I did not want to miss the city at night, shimmering like a beacon and ushering in our annual time of rest. It's not hard to understand why they call it Charm City.
And so, even though I will continue to root for the Eagles win or lose (lose most of the time), it is driving through the labyrinth of round overpasses into Maryland's great city that festers a feeling of wonder in my belly. I feel alive when I see those lights. So, I wrote a poem about it.
You shine like a light bright
Under bed sheet tents.
Your stars, they twinkle
In your Lego skyscrapers.
You were born out of the
Dreams of Children building
Something they could look up to.
You look like jazz
The way you tickle the night sky
Like fingers on those ivories.
When I walk your streets
I wanna scat tunes and
Shimmy with pin striped suits
On Fosse legs under a flapped skirt.
You gleam like glow sticks
Neon streaking the rain kissed pavement
In a river of techno.
Electric blue washed in
Hot Sea foam green.
Your cars leave raves in their wake
And rainbows in their rear view.
You dress like the symphony
How you fill the air with strings.
Your tympani thunders in my belly, and
Cymbals crash in my chest
There are flutes in the
Throats of your people.
They sing urban arias.
You burn like the floating lanterns
Painted pink with cherry blossoms
Slowly lifting in flitting ascent
There is something ancient in
Your metropolitan ways.
Your eyes are wise, but
Your heart is young and radiant.
