These are random thoughts provoked by Doug Banister’s sermon “God’s Vision for the City” delivered at All Souls Church in Knoxville. They may make sense. They may not. I invite you, in the spirit of open dialogue, to react, contribute, add to, build upon these thoughts and musings and hopefully somewhere at the center of this discussion we will find something that rings true.
During my campaign for city council I spent a lot of time thinking about issues that people were talking about, but thinking about “problems” always frustrated me and felt shortsighted and always led my mind toward pondering a more fundamental and positive inquiry: what is the purpose or goal of a city? I decided, somewhat tentatively that the goal of a city is to support, protect and promote the life, wellbeing, happiness and potential of its citizens in a way that encourages active participation and responsibility.
Cities are not ideas. They are physical settlements. For example a campground is a settlement. It has a very transient and temporary use. People live together in many ways for many reasons. I am not sure why Knoxville was established. A look back at its history would give us clues about why the roads and buildings are arranged in their own particular form.
The form of a human settlement reveals the customs, habits and social ideas of the people living there. It tells us by its size, shape and arrangement which human actions are encouraged and which are not. The shape of our surroundings physically obstructs, encourages, and directs our actions.
So what does this have to do with Doug’s idea that God is restoring shalom in the city, that God is restoring peace, wholeness, completion and delight? What does it mean, as Isaiah suggests, that God is moving the city from tears, death, poverty, idolatry and violence to laughter, healing, prosperity, worship and love?
The idea I have is that shalom is not just an idea but also a practice that is enacted by God’s people in their actions, way they live together and even the form of their settlement. Remember Doug mentioning the importance of sidewalks.
Shalom is more conducive to a city because the built environment is more cascading and overlapping. The relationships are rich with interdependence. Of course the opposite is true: when the relationships break down, the problems are more toxic.
The suburbs lack the intertwining closeness that shalom requires as a kind of precondition.
I hope this gets us thinking. Peace.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
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8 comments:
Chris,
I have this vision of many of us running around with electric cords with light bulbs on the other end. We suburbanites have been sticking our cords into many seemingly promising outlets and have become discouraged that the light emanating from the other end is flickering and dim. Perhaps it is because , if we get a long enough extension cord, we can plug in and not get involved. I hope and pray that, through some cogent direction, we can all plug in and light this thing up.
Shalom
I have friends who live in the burbs who still ask "why do we need downtown? I never go there."
I like Bruce's extension cord analogy. As Chris said, the city is the center of the physical settlement that is Knoxville. We keep running more and more extension cords to more and more appliances, but we're neglecting the electrical service and the breaker box. It is as if we expect all of the outlying areas to succeed while we ignore the center. Or more simply put, we bought all new appliances and a big screen, but we're still running a 100 amp box when we need 200 amp service. And the center is much larger than "downtown."
The center is the "inner ring" around downtown as well. That includes Park City, north Knoxville, Fountain City, south Knoxville, and Bearden.
I frequently anthropomorphize "urban decay" as a dark figure chasing "suburban sprawl." We must prepare for what we want these areas to look like 100 years from now, to do a better job than those before us who moved out. We can't just keep moving further out. It will come for those areas, too, unless we truly bring Knoxville together.
I believe God has a vision for the city. And we must each use our spiritual gifts to create shalom, and to build up the city as a whole. It is not enough for my neighborhood to be safe, and clean, and prosperous. We cannot rest until everyone benefits from life, wellbeing, and happiness.
For some reason, I'm reminded of the saying "good fences make good neighbors." We are all interdependent, whether we like it or not. We have a need to feel independence (and security and freedom), but the interdependence is just as important. There has to be a balance. Inner city resident or burb resident, we all have the same basic needs beyond Maslow. We need to feel connected to something greater than ourselves. That's a community. But it starts with me, and you and you and you.
I'm learning in a deeper way the power of and my need for community. The community of Christ, "...the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way." The very fullness of Christ experienced within community. A community that is weakened by being sectioned into exclusive "mini-communities". As an individual, I can choose to build "sidewalks" that will connect me to and further my usefullness within the community.
Wow, what wonderful comments.
Shalom-making (or community building) seems to require two ingredients: people and a place. But not just any people and any place. The people who are committed to shalom are prepared and willing to act as neighbors (indeed, this takes lots of practice) and the place (the city) is arranged to make this neighborliness work, to facilitate the shalom between people.
For example, at the most basic level when two people sit and talk, they position their chairs in a way to make that conversation comfortable and go well. This would suggest that as shalom builders we would have opinions about what kind of buildings get built where. Or how the city spends its money. Or what would be considered a public policy priority from a shalom point of view?
We are always in some kind of community. I know that when I say that I desire community what I am usually saying is that I want something better, more dynamic, more engaging, more fulfilling. I think what we have been saying here in these comments is that the people need to want better relationships and that the city can provide a great context for practicing these shalom moments. With public spaces, restaurants and cafes, farmer’s markets, condominiums and apartments, festivals, sidewalks, offices, the general closer proximity of people, it all makes for fertile and challenging ground for shalom making.
And if shalom includes the five movements that Doug outlined from Isaiah, then we have a pretty clear path to follow.
close proxemity is the condition for peace. that seems counterintuitive...at least initially, when, perhaps, i confuse peace with serenity or solitude. peace, initially, seems synonymous with "unobstructed," "undistracted," or "quiet" - none of which occur regularly downtown. i remember living in close proxemity with "big ed" growing up. big ed is black. i'm white. big ed was appropriately named. by his senior year in high school, he stood at 6' 2" and weighed 330 pounds. big ed and i played football together from 5th grade through our senior year of highschool. i've seen ed reach around a guard to grab a running back. with both gaurd and running back in his grasp he tackled them both. conditions for peace?
we also went to church together. our youth group took a week of every summer for a mission trip. every year we would go to the four corners area and work with the Navajo indians. we made minor repairs on homes and churches, and we led vacation bible school for the children on the reservation. one of the best parts of the week was the first night. the churces with which we worked always began the week with a worship service. the sweetest part of that service was the end. the pastor, along with members of his congregation, would teach us to sing "jesus loves me" in navajo. it was always awkward. no one in our church spoke navajo, but we would fumble through producing the most jumbled rendition of "jesus loves me" ever. it seemed like nothing but noise at the time.
looking back i see the beginnings of peace - black, white and indian...big ed, me and the navajo indians fumbling to articulate the grounds for peace, "jesus loves me." in america, a land borne on the backs of slaves, where indians walked the trail of tears, that worship service was nothing short of miraculous. peace began to emerge as we lived together for a week. it wasn't in the silence. you could hear it amidst the caucophony of big ed's voice and my voice joined with the voices of the navajo indians.
i'm just now realizing the irony in my last post. i wrote on close proxemity as the conditions for peace and i distanced myself from everyone (as if the computer wasn't distance already) by posting anonymously. sorry. i did that for two reasons. (1) i thought what i wrote was a tad on the mellowdramatic side (and so a little embarrasing to be associated with it) and (2) i didn't want to mess with signing up for a "blogger" account.
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