COMMENTARY: Takin’ it to the streets

NEW YORK — “You never know what you’ll find in Central Park,” a fellow bystander said to me. In our case, we were picnicking on a knoll when the sound of drums drew us deeper into the park. We followed the drumming past a lake, up a walkway, across a hill, and suddenly there they […]

NEW YORK — “You never know what you’ll find in Central Park,” a fellow bystander said to me.

In our case, we were picnicking on a knoll when the sound of drums drew us deeper into the park.

We followed the drumming past a lake, up a walkway, across a hill, and suddenly there they were: a circle of men and women dressed in native costumes and elaborate feathered headgear, dancing around a large drum.


They circled one direction, then back toward the other. They turned as they moved, stepped toward the center, then out again.

A few carried stringed instruments; some wore castanets-like percussion devices around their legs. Feathers rose three feet above their heads. One dancer’s costume had a death mask.

An Anglo standing beside a tree remembered a similar dance a year ago. “I think they are Mexican,” she said. “Maybe Indians.”

Another pointed to a banner being carried by one dancer. “Something to do with Guadalupe,” she said.

Finally, I found a woman swaying to the rhythm. “We are Mexican Indians,” she said, “and that is Our Lady of Guadalupe. This is how we honor the gods. She is our way to the gods.”

Now it came together. Based on an image of the Virgin that suddenly appeared in the 16th century on the cloak of a Mexican peasant, the shrine of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe in Mexico City is among the most visited Catholic shrines in the world.


Our Lady of Guadalupe is a unifying symbol in a nation riven by ethnic divisions. Some believe the image represents not only the Virgin Mary but the indigenous goddess Tonantzin and/or the Aztec mother goddess Coatlicue.

So goes religion in New York City. Turn one corner, and you find a Good Friday procession in Spanish. Turn another, a Jewish festival in Hebrew. I have seem Muslims parading on Park Avenue, Tibetan Buddhists chanting outside the Waldorf-Astoria, Jewish study groups reading Torah in Central Park, young Christians greeting Easter sunrise on a lakeside ledge, and countless people reading holy books on park benches and subway seats.

Although religious buildings seem closed most of the time, many people take their faith outside and display a high degree of tolerance. Divisions might be sharp inside the churches, shrines, temples, synagogues and mosques of the city. Claims of absolute correctness aren’t uncommon. But here in Central Park, the city’s common ground, religion seems drained of toxicity.

Here, faith is respected as a personal choice. If you want to sit in a circle with other young Jews wearing yarmulkes and scarves and celebrate Jewish identity, that is your choice. If you want to sit outside the Hippo Playground and read the Bible, that is your choice. If you want to dance in a circle while singing to an image of a Virgin/goddess, that is your choice.

New York’s “melting pot” doesn’t water down and obliterate identity. If anything, this pot sharpens identity. The “melting” here is an ability to get along. What melts away is the fear of anything different, hostility toward a competing belief, that smug superiority that insecure believers project toward the world.

New York hasn’t always been like this. This city, like the larger nation, has an ugly history of hostilities among religions. It isn’t that way now. I can tell you this: I have lived in the midst of deep intolerance. Tolerance is better.


(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project, http://www.churchwellness.com. His Web site is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com.)

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