Plainfield

June 18, 2007

My favorite book growing up was H.G. Well’s The Time Machine. I was enchanted by the idea of returning to a place and being amazed at how it had changed, for good or ill. That is about how I felt when I returned to NJ and spent the morning driving around Plainfield and the neighborhoods where I grew up. The weather was fairly cool for late-June, more like early spring as I recall. Many of the houses there are two or three stories high, along arbored streets. What had been Irish, Jewish, and Italian neighborhoods had given way to African-American and gay communities and now, Latinos of several Hispanic cultures. Even familiar places seemed different with some showing age and disrepair, but otherwise everything looked green and thriving.

I got to Plainfield Congregational UCC in the early evening and was met by Ruth Sykes who joyfully recalled the dramas we put on there in the mid-1990s when Rev George Blair was the pastor. Ruth was still very much involved in community theater doing backstage support. I was seeing this beautiful place with it’s A-frame sanctuary, so familiar, yet as if for the first time. My presentation included the Prologue and Sabbath, followed by refreshments in the fellowship hall where we talked.

The pastor, Rev James Colvin and his wife Sarah were there along with about ten or so people. The original Daphne Willard in my life was an English woman (she pronounced her name something like “Doff-neh Wi-lahd”). She and her longtime companion Betty Willey were members of that church as far back as when I was a child there. Wes Day had been a young adult who helped Loretta Roberts with our youth group. For many years since, Wes had been a youth worker active with the Boy Scouts and athletic teams as well as a member of the local rescue squad. Kathy DeLucca has been the Christian Education director there since at least the mid-1980s. When I told her about Andrei’s drawing, she showed me a worksheet she had just received that day –
with a line drawing illustration of Jesus’ stilling the storm. Hmm… coincidence? Not in my line of work, right?

There was also a young man named Jeff who worked at the public library as an archivist and whom they were all quite grateful to have as a member of the congregation. He must have been the sextant, too, because he locked up at the close of the evening. This fellow Jeff, Wes, and I realized we were all “homeys” as white young men having grown up in predominantly black Plainfield – the struggles and joys of that. There was a deep pain, even anger that Jeff and I shared having gone through the Plainfield school system – but also the conviction that prejudice against anyone for any reason was intolerable to us.

One thing that sticks with me about the coffee and conversation that followed my presentation, was when I mentioned that Plainfield Congregational UCC had been a sacred place to me, Pastor Colvin spoke up and affirmed, “It still is a sacred place!” And he spoke of the programs of outreach they were now doing and it was reassuring to know that this would always be a special place to the people gathered that night and others yet to come.