Well, I am sitting here in the hotel room while my wife talks to her grandmother (whom we will see Sunday afternoon and spend near a week with) while we wake up. We hit San Francisco yesterday afternoon - are right off of Union Square, hit Chinatown for dinner yesterday.
San Francisco is a fascinatingly diverse city. You can see so many different cultures of the world here - even though I mainly was jumping back and forth between Asian and the European-posh cultures with where we have hit.
On the one hand, we can overlook the wide expanse of different customs and cultures.
On the other hand, we often forget the unifying power of the Gospel.
Oklahoma is a relatively straightforward place, culturally. At least northwest Oklahoma. Running into Mexican immigrants is "exotic". And it is easy to slip into an idea that "Everyone" does the same thing.
San Francisco can lead one to the opposite idea. There is so much going on the idea becomes that everyone is so vastly different and we are so utterly isolated. There cannot be any common ground.
Yet the Church cuts through that - the Church is the Church of 1. One God, One Faith, One Baptism. It is the Church that cuts through cultures - how is it that we who are Parthians and Medes and folks from Cyrene hear the Gospel preached in our own tongues?
There is unity, and there is specification. This is the tragedy of when people abandon the liturgy. The liturgy is the unity - the diversity is the tongue which is used. You don't try to mesh the diversity by abandoning the unity of the Church and what she says and sings in order to try to reach folks.
Yeah, San Francisco is diverse, but they still think that they are San Franciscan. Why can we understand this?
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