Underground Bible

I think I've mentioned that I quite enjoy the commuting life - 20 minutes in the subway on the way to and from school to read papers or the paper or a book, a nice buffer. I didn't mention that lots of other people read, too - and that the subway bestseller is the Bible. (Q'urans and Jewish scriptures are read, too.) Interesting to think about what it would be like for the Bible to be your traveling companion, its rod and its staff comforting you as you traversed the false and forced intimacy with strangers of public New York City.

More than just linking your places of work and of rest, subway Bible-reading lets you remember the overarching religious frame into which they, too, must fit. I'm reminded of the car of a grad school colleague's wife which filled with gospel music as soon as you turned the ignition: praise and worship in motion! Urban geographers sometimes talk about places like subways as "non-spaces," spaces disconnected from anyone's life or world, but here the valley of the underground is more than exalted. The hours which the career-builder rejected may be the cornerstones of a godly life.