Okay, I can't seem to get these published in the right order. So if you would, please go DOWN to the post "The City - Able, Cain & Enoch - The Text" and read up from there. (The City - Being Killers or Keepers last).
So is the city a place of creativity, opportunity and positive things or a place of evil and ills?
My family of origin has some interesting stories related to members of the family who have gone to a town or city for employment, recreation, or other opportunities. One of the family's elders had concerns. The city was seen by this elder as a place where exposure to others with different beliefs and values might influence family members to immorality and other err.
Has it been? Of course I can't claim that all responses to situations in the city have been sinless. Furthermore, I don't think all family members would agree about which responses to count as a demonstration of downfall and which to count as demonstration of growth. But I see a lot of spiritual growth and good that has come through first hand exposure, and in some cases the good fortune of friendship, with the "other" that the streets of the city have connected me with.
The city's concrete moves me away from nature, but it connects me with people of diverse experience, belief and perspective. This too is a spiritual issue that connects us with deep and basic things. Too often such differences lead members of the human family to be their brother's competitor or even killer as Cain was. The city affords us many opportunities to make choices that perpetuate our separation from those who differ from us, or that help us be each other's keepers.
In the middle of this city, in our Garden of Gethsemane, how do we do that? How else can we do that?
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