Happiness is only a curly fry away…

That was the claim of one fast food store in Pittsburgh last week. Looking round at the fellow diners it looked like survival rather than happiness was highest on their list of priorities. Downtown Pittsburgh on a Sunday morning I discovered is not a place where visitors usually tread.

The predominantly white congregation of the Anglican Cathedral that morning was in sharp contrast to those, mostly African-American on the streets outside. I smiled when I saw two older ladies huddled in a doorway, obviously waiting for a ride to church, one of them clutching a bag with the imprint ‘Families that pray together stay together’. Within every stereotype there is an element of truth.

The service in the Cathedral was grand – an organ prelude, the accompaniment of a processing choir and the liturgy are not my usual Sunday morning fare but it was refreshing all the same. Later we discovered that the church remains open so that some of the homeless can come in for some warmth. At one stage so many were arriving that a new plan had to be devised and so the local churches in the area cover the costs of a bus to take 200 – 300 homeless people to a church just outside the city centre for their own service followed by a hot meal. I guess anything has to be better than sub-zero conditions outside.  The Cathedral allows the odd straggler to sleep in the pews for a while after the service. Beside it the Presbyterian Church has a security guard outside…

There are 2000 homeless people in Pittsburgh – a city where the week before we arrived the temperature was -11°C.  Mostly they are men… women don’t survive long on the streets. Either way I’m sure that happiness is more than a curly fry away for them.

Later that evening the group of us who had arrived in Pittsburgh to visit & observe the operation of faith based organisations in the city attended the Open Door Gathering – described as a ‘missional’ church. For communion they had set up tables in the middle of the chairs so that the community could gather around the table in the centre of worship and serve one another. 

Psalm 23 was the focus of the talk/sermon… one of the points being that while we are all mostly happy enough with ‘The Lord is my shepherd’ part we’re not so good at the ‘lying down in green pastures’ bit did not pass me by. In a society where even, or perhaps especially, in our churches doing is prized more highly than being, happiness, or should that be contentment, does not lie in the curly fries but in rest and restoration of the soul.