The park bench: Your front-row view of life’s passing parade

Note: After reading the Toronto Star article on the sculpture of the homeless Jesus on a bench (see previous post), and  the controversy it generated, I found this Globe and Mail column to be a fitting companion piece.  Can we find Jesus incarnated there, not only in the homeless person sleeping on a bench, but in all those with whom we share space on these universally accessible places of rest and reflection?  - submitted by Gareth

Immortalized in everything from film to sculpture, the humble public perch (even under a blanket of snow) is a powerful civic tool - part item of furniture, part gentle reminder that, in the democratic realm, everyone gets a seat.

by Sarah Hampson, Globe and Mail, Saturday, December 7, 2013

Isaac Davis (Woody Allen) with Mary Wilke (Diane Keaton) in "Manhattan", a United Artists release. The two are silhouetted in the shadow of the Queensboro Bridge in New York as they chat on a Sutton Place bench.
(United Artists)

It is where conversations can happen (or not), an invitation to stillness in a fast world, a place for romance and a promise of inclusion.

Had you not thought very much about the bench as public furniture? I hadn’t either until recently, when, on a visit to the park, I suddenly realized that I was in the living room of a grand palace, with grass as carpet, banks of trees as walls and the sky as ceiling. And there were all these people, a diverse crowd, sitting in the huge reception room on benches. There we all were, thrown together, part of a revolving mix of solitary participants at a gathering we didn’t know we had been invited to.

And then I thought – because thinking, after all, is what you do a fair amount of on a public bench – about how this piece of furniture functions as a powerful metaphor and civic tool. In this, the season of holiday conviviality, the bench – even if under a thick blanket of snow – is perhaps a gentle reminder that the world can and should be a generous and democratic place, where everyone has a place to sit and witness life’s passing parade.

You can read the entire column by CLICKING HERE.