Finding faith in Cleveland

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Preachers love to talk about faith as a mustard seed — the small little seed that blossoms into a huge plant. What they don’t like to talk about is faith’s dark twin: doubt. On a good day it’s easy to have faith. Darker days aren’t as easy. Doubt is always hanging out at the edges, ready to step in when faith takes a break. Where faith feels certain, doubt raises questions. Yin to yang.

If faith’s a mustard seed, then doubt is fertilizer. Too much and it’ll burn the plant, too little and the plant is weak, just enough and the plant will be hardy. Finding that balance is rough anywhere, but finding it in a town like Cleveland requires exercise.

Cleveland’s one of those towns that has seen better and worse. Downtown’s in a slump — there are empty buildings and empty streets at high noon, boarded up windows where stores used to have a golden age. The press wants to constantly re-invent the city as somewhere else, when the city’s personality just isn’t going to fit as a new New York, Chicago or Boston. It’s just Cleveland.

We all have our doubts about this place: employment’s sometimes elusive, salaries aren’t what they could be, the suburbs are a constant siren’s call. Our educational system isn’t even second-rate, but still there’s something that pulls us to the city.

There’s a beat to Cleveland, but it’s more of a [Pogue-ish](http://www.pogues.com/Releases/Lyrics/LPs/RumSodomy/DirtyTown.html) style than top 40. We are a dirty old town.

Our buildings, our walls, they have a history that is written in the stone — Elliot Ness, Rockefeller, Garfield, we have our greats and our fallen. We’re a town of immigrants pulled together by commerce and location, a network of neighborhoods that co-mingle, separate and single, each with its own flavor and language.

We’re east and west, polarized nearly to the point of passport requirements. Go ahead — ask a West Sider for directions to [La Gelateria](http://lagelateriacleveland.com/).

We’re all these things, but we’re even more. When friends from out of town visit, I make a point of taking them to the West Side Market. Why? Because it’s a Cleveland thing. We buy pierogies and sausage, maybe some chocolates or some pasties, and we absorb the market atmosphere because it is _Cleveland_. We cruise around the neighborhoods, looking at the churches, we walk around West Park and Ohio City, we go to the waterfront. I take them on a tour of the reasons why we live in Cleveland and they’re _jealous._ They want these things in their cities.

Finding faith in a city requires acknowledging the doubt and going one step further; digging past it to the roots. Finding faith in Cleveland means finding that one elusive but excellent mom-and-pop restaurant — the one with only ten tables but whose owners welcome everyone as if they’re family. It means looking at those dirty neighborhoods for what they were and what they’ll be. It’s reconnecting with the history behind the city; the good and the bad. Finding faith again is about finding doubt and making it fertile enough to grow something good again.