We're All Mad Here

Walking back from church along the snowy streets of Pittsburgh and for the first time in weeks I felt I had regained my center. My perspective was thrown when I started to lose sight of the fact that I was only here because this is where god wanted me. I tried to take on the world again by myself which I can’t do and grow frustrated and anxious when I found the world would not budge. And after months of searching for a church where I felt at home I am happy to have finally come across one. How can you resist a church where the preacher says the Irish blessing at the end of service? I am not sure why church is so centering, and frankly, I am not going to overanalyze it either, as long as it remains so.

The First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh ( www.fpcp.org ) is on 6th Avenue, across from the Duquesne club, a block from Saks. The church, built in the late 1800’s early 1900’s has thirteen Tiffany stained glass windows (26’tall x 7.5’wide), the only windows to be made by the Tiffany studios made using a process like this: the scenes were painted (upper sections of angles, lower sections of scenes from the new testament) on a special surface, then backed with plating of Tiffany opalescent and Favril glass (hand made) all set in a specially milled lead made to house the two layers of glass. (pulled from Bill Baumgarten’s cover story in the March 2004 edition of The Downtowner Magazine. www.dnapgh.com) With a setting such as this, how could you not feel at peace after a few hours here.

Last night after work I went to the Lemon Grass Café for their Pad Thai and lemon grass tea which is all so addictive. I needed something to calm me down after I waited 45 minutes for a taxi that never came. I called the Yellow Cab Taxi once, watched 4 empty cabs go buy and called again in twenty minutes to see where the hell the cab was…”you didn’t see one stop?” –operator, um, I think a big yellow car with a sign on top of it is kind of hard to miss. Another 5 empty ones passed until I was finally pissed off to the point of needing a drink. So luckily Lemon Grass was in between Atria’s and me or else I would have blown my cab money on merlot instead of Pad Thai. Next time I am trying one of the other taxi services.

Work last night was insanely peaceful, good for me, bad for Todd. I sat sipping my tea watching the rain come down and hit the puddles outside of the windows as the people past and the sun went down. Little white lights lit up the bare trees outside and jazz music played all night. The candles and low lights in the restaurant made it all the more relaxing. Natalia was dancing to the music and had me laughing so hard, she had a high ponytail which made her look like a Chihuahua, so I kept getting an image of a Chihuahua dancing to “Hey Mambo” and a few songs from the rat pack off and on.

…may god hold you in the palm of his hand.

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