I took a vacation last week. I didn’t leave Oakland because my kids still were in school, but the school where Anne teaches was in spring break, so I decided to take a few days off so that the two of us could do things together that the kids might not have wanted to do. So, for example, we rode our tandem bike out onto the Bay Bridge to where the bike path ends. We took public transportation to the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, and on Friday morning, while Anne took the kids to school and did some shopping, I made a micro-pilgrimage by riding my bicycle to two different holy sites in Oakland. And they couldn’t have been more different.
My first stop was a little Vietnamese Buddhist shrine located at the corner of 19th Street and 11th Avenue. This place has gotten national attention (I first heard about it on PRI) because it has a remarkable story. A few years back one of the local residents decided put a Buddha statue in the neglected and trash-strewn median at the intersection of 19th and 11th. The man was not religious, he just thought the Buddha (which he purchased at an Ace Hardware store) would look nicer than bare dirt and empty beer bottles.
But after he put the Buddha on the median a miracle happened. Vietnamese immigrants living in the neighborhood started caring for the Buddha. They painted him and erected a shelter over him. Said shelter is now outfitted with granite trim (leftover from someone’s kitchen remodel, I think). There are fresh flowers, and incense, and flags, and now the original sitting Buddha has been joined by other statues, including a reclining Buddha and Quan Yin, the Buddhist personification of compassion. The shrine is now a hub of religious activity in the neighborhood, which has experienced a drop both in crime and in litter since the installation of Buddha. It’s worth a visit. (For more information on the Oakland Buddha you can listen to this story online)
When I arrived at the Shine there were five folks praying together. These worshipers welcomed me with a smile and invited me to stand—and later kneel—next to them as we prayed together. It was a deeply moving experience, even though I’m not a Buddhist, I have no idea what one does when praying at a Buddhist shrine, and I couldn’t ask for directions because I don’t speak Vietnamese, and my fellow pilgrims didn’t seem to speak much English.
After my prayers at the Buddhist shrine, I got back on my bike and rode around Lake Merritt to the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Christ the Light. It’s a beautiful building—an excellent example of modern church architecture and the kind of place I usually love—but it wasn’t welcoming. When I got to the cathedral I couldn’t find a bike rack, so I started to lock my bike to a fence near the church’s front doors. As I was preparing to enter the church a security guard (complete with a spring-like chord dangling from his ear) stopped me and asked me to move my bike to a bike rack in the parking garage—a rack that I found only after wandering around two levels of subterranean parking garage, sucking automotive exhaust and fearing for my safety while avoiding cars whose drivers (understandably) weren’t expecting to find a cyclist so far from the street. After I locked up my bike I got lost trying to find my way into the cathedral; when finally I arrived at the sanctuary I was in a foul mood, and didn’t appreciate the space as much as I wanted to.
So here’s what I learned. First, I learned that our church—like the cathedral—needs a bike rack. Oakland is fast becoming a community that is not just bike friendly but is bike-centric, and we need to be part of that. But, on a more positive note, I realized that by practicing “radical hospitality” at Montclair Presbyterian Church, we are attempting to do with Jesus on Thornhill Drive what the folks have done with Buddha on 11th Avenue: we are creating religious space that nurtures the community and draws folks in from distant places. This is good work, and I’m happy to be doing it with you.
Here are some photos from the Buddhist Shrine:
