It was over thirty years ago that I moved to New York City in search of fame and fortune, or at least to figure out what I should do after college. I wasn’t really that much different from thousands of other kids heading to the city each year. I moved in with some friends from school and started off on my career. I explored the city and sought like minded people to hang out with.

I found my community at Grace Episcopal Church in Manhattan. Not only would we get together for church and coffee hour afterwards on Sunday mornings, but we would attend services in the middle of the week and meet in small groups afterwards. Large groups of us would go to the New Jersey shore together during summer weekends, or to retreats at an Episcopal summer camp at other times of the year.

Many people met, became couples and eventually husband and wife. Some headed off to become priests, monks, or missionaries. Others developed their craft as actors, dancers, musicians, and other forms of artists. Years passed and people moved out of the city, but we still stayed in touch. This weekend, a bunch of us gathered in Connecticut.

We attended the church of a woman who had become a priest and then went over to her house for a potluck dinner afterwards. We caught up on stories of each others lives. Many of us now have children the age that we were when we first met at Grace Church years ago. What will become of our children? Will they find meaningful jobs and communities?

The stories were not all happy. There were marriages that had failed, careers that had gone off course, children that were struggling, or worse. In all of this, there was openness and authenticity. There was no competition to paint a misleading image of a more successful happier life than others, as I’ve seen too often at reunions of other groups.

It brought me back to the Great American Novel, or at least the great American collection of short stories. I haven’t written my magnum opus, yet I continue to live out moments of it, and some of those moments were at the reunion. Maybe someday, a thought, a feeling, a glimmer of one of the discussions will make it into something I write. I watched my friend pay rapt attention to others’ stories, and I expect to see some feeling from the weekend emerge in the character of one of the actors that was there, in the voice of one of the singers there, or in some other marvelous creation.

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along