#Write31Days 30 • Cities

And The City
It's always been about the city, but it's ironic that I named this blog I began immediately after I finished the Community Economic Development certificate after the desert, and not after the city or the cities. It's long been about the desert, but for even longer, my life and passions have been about the city. My first formal online endeavor was creating an urban group in the old MSN groups. Although MSN disbanded (trashed) its groups, I had the foresight and the smarts to save what I'd posted and the conversations I'd had on that page with cousin Torrie from Hio and Aisha from Georgia.

Cities are central to shipping and commerce. The city is the place where cultures and styles intersect and intermix, where languages mingle and combine into pidgins and creoles. In most cities you can find any food and any music you desire. Cities usually have at least of touch more urbanity than even close by suburban or rural communities; there's something about life in the big city with all that exposure to all those ideas and possibilities that raises one's attitude and makes for sophistication. The city often dishes out or at least leads to too much most people would rather not have: poverty; crime; disappointment; high prices; hopelessness.

Is it still time to celebrate the city?! Well, yes, it is! Scripture reminds us a garden well-tended grows into a healthy city. Scripture tells us God's name first dwelt in the city of Shiloh:

Then the whole congregation of the people of Israel assembled at Shiloh and set up the tent of meeting {tabernacle, the portable place of God's presence} there. The land lay subdued before them. Joshua 18:1

One of my fave city graphics I'll try to find and add to this says, "Celebrate the city! Where the mind sees more than the eye!" Is it time to celebrate cities? Cities often are places where being different, being the other, being on the edge is safer than it typically is elsewhere. In spite of and because of, the city has, the cities have potential and a future no other type of settlement can match. Celebrate the city?! Yes, and amen!