Skip to main content

San Francisco to Glenwood Springs

I am watching a group of 25 year olds go up the train one has a silver metal case I presume he has a musical instrument he will play in the observation car. By the time we reach the observation car, strange name like you can’t observe from any other car, tanoy announcement stop looking out the windows unless you’re in the observation car, end of announcement. Yes so I get to the Observation car and the case is open and in full swing you guessed it is a poker game. There are neat piles of different coloured chips in front of the players and playing cards are doing the rounds. This game continues to evolve in one form or another until Reno ** hours. There is beer drunk stories swapped money lost and won but no arguments, no bad language, no difficult embarrassing encounters with fellow human beings. Just fun.
This train journey is made up of the usual Amtrak characteristics top speed of 50 70 MPH, the occasional stop for track maintenance, when you are always told by the crew what the problem is. Not inappropriate amounts of time our speed is that of an elderly lady on a bicycle in no rush to get to church. But always the movie on view out of the window is of the American landscape who is always the main actor with humanity as supporting role.
What America has and I believe they may have forgotten this is, space. For hours on end there is just land. Land then land then land. In England train travels out of the city to take you to another city, you are moved out of the city to the suburbs into the countryside and then into the suburbs over coffee, you get what I mean. Coffee time can take you from city to city. Here you get coffee, dinner, poker and no second city maybe a small town like Truckee and the empty American landscape. What they have is space. I presume in this one sabbatical journey I will have travelled more miles than Jesus did in his adult life.

Comments

  1. Franci5 October 2009 at 11:43

    Oh, no. It's not forgotten. Space is one of the first things I mention when people ask me what I miss about the States. Perhaps, we all forget to value what we have, and want what we don't have. I'm even praying for rain this week, here, in England, which I never thought I'd have to do. But, man, are the gardens bone dry.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Paul and Cathy29 October 2009 at 00:50

    Plenty of space in SA too.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Response To Bishop North

A while back Bishop Phillip North spoke to New Wine and caused a bit of a reaction one of it was a Tweet to my millions of followers. In response I had a phone call from The Church Times asking for a quote because I serve in a poor parish, I declined and said I would put a more considered response on my blog, so here it is with a link to The Bishops full talk. https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2017/4-august/news/uk/there-s-a-future-for-the-church-if-evangelicals-put-the-poor-first-bishop-north-tells-new-wine 1.      One of the issues the church does not recognise is the exportation of people , talents and money from parishes like mine to middle class parishes which is draining and demanding on leadership. For 10 years I thought I was building a community, then it dawned on me I was building people up to go to other places. 2.      Bishop Phillip talks of abandonment of the poor: I think it’s more complicated than that. When ...
9 comments
Read more

Tokens of Trust

Tokens of Trust by Rowan Williams I have been deeply jolted to the importance of the role of trust in my life and the cost when trust has been missing. Many years ago I spent a long time at the top of a cliff roped and secured being encouraged to abseil over the edge to the bottom a number of feet below. No matter how much my highly competent friend encouraged me to trust him and the equipment, I could not. During the same period of my life it was my job to service the fire service turntable ladders, which meant climbing 100 feet to the top of them. This I did many times never without a sense of anticipation, trusting the mechanics and workmanship that had been carried out. But it is with people where trust is cashed out or held back, reaping rewards or crippling relationships. I think the book has jolted me to understand my role as a professional truster  As a stipended priest I am called to model to, and with, my community my profession of trust. As I reflect upo...
1 comment
Read more

Why did we come?

Why did we come? You know the old story for people of certain age you, get to the top of the stairs and could not remember why you went up the stairs. Well here is another observation i was walking through Heathrow Terminal 5 the other day passing the oh so many shops the only one being in my price range was WH Smith . it struck me do people really get the cheapest seats on a plan and then think oh I need a bag its only £500 or that shirt will be handy its only £200? I digress, as we made our way past the many shops Ruth observes that it does not seem obvious that we are waiting for a plane. Terminal 5 happens to be a shopping centre (precinct as we used to call them) were you just happen, if you remember, to leave in a plan. In visiting 5 churches before I left for the USA I came away from almost all of them thinking and feeling, why did I go? It was like being at the top of the stairs. I write this not as accusation but observation of the church’s I visit but as an observation of my...
6 comments
Read more