Charlotte, North Carolina
- Posted by drwill on June 16th, 2007 filed in Travel, Insight
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Sally & I are in Charlotte, North Carolina for the wedding of my niece, Allison. She is a remarkable young woman who has always been devoted to working with special needs children. She and Chris will live in Raleigh, North Carolina but they are having the wedding here in Charlotte, where they met and loved and lived.
I have had the privilege of traveling to every one of the United States multiple times. I have seen all the great cities, as well as countless smaller communities across the country. Charlotte is among my favorites. It is a beautiful, growing city with magnificent modern, high rise urban architecture and outstanding public art. Rising over the top of the many skyscrapers are a dozen more construction cranes.
Walking these streets I feel very grateful to have shed the cynicism of my younger years. It is cynicism that poisoned my capacity to be grateful for what I see and experience in my life. By finally rejecting the impulse to ridicule and dismiss (which, as a therapist I came to understand is merely a defense against my frailty and vulnerability) I have been able to live in the moment and full of the moment. Thank God!
In the light of this awakening, humanity is a never ceasing wonder. Because to simply look past that which people have built leaves one with only reminders of what we are missing. Taking in the grandeur of human achievement balances the scale against the suffering we see all around us.
Since I am singularly helpless to alleviate all the suffering I see, I surrender to the mercy of God and am reminded that the story is not over as I watch the iron workers move around two hundred feet in the air, erecting yet another magnificent edifice. What a world!
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