Tuesday, 19 May 2009
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It's snowing in Edmonton. In the middle of May. But strangely enough, it doesn't bother me half as much as it bothers everyone else. I suppose the Vancouverite in me shrugged off inclement weather as being part of the price to pay for living in such a beautiful city, but then I stopped and realized that this is Edmonton, not Vancouver.
It is not as though Edmonton is without charm. It has a genuine small-town feel that reminds me of Saskatoon, except perhaps with a great deal more sprawl. I borrowed my sister's car and drove down to South Edmonton Common today to look for a sweater and possibly a suit. It was not the snow that bothered me as I stepped out of the car and surveyed the stores placed so far apart that the thought of walking from outlet to outlet was somehwat unpalatable. No, what unsettled me was how unnatural the entire thing seemed-- as though the buildings were more machinations against the way of nature, a distinctly fallen attempt to "civilize" things when things needed no such "civilizing." Even though the facades of these stores were done up in cultured stone, I could not help but feel the cognitive dissonance of urban life, something that has been on my mind a lot lately since finishing Jacques Ellul's The Meaning of The City, one of the better books I have read so far in 2009.
I can't live without the city. None of us can. The way the world is set up is that we will inevitably urbanize the face of the earth because this is the simple truth of living in an industrialized society. And as a shepherd, I go where the people go. Though I sometimes fantasize about having a mountain retreat (or a Fortress of Solitude) to sit and write in, the truth is that we Kingdom folk aren't called out of the city, but because of what Christ does and the hope we live in, to engage in the city.
And no, I'm not actually a fan of that Chris Tomlin song. I actually can't stand it. Maybe Tomlin has read Jacques Ellul, but for the hundreds of thousands who sing it, I am afraid that it might be a misinterpreted invitation to participate in pre-millenial self-justification by works. But that's just me. I'm sure everyone else just sings it and thinks "what a pretty song."
Edmonton is built for snow. It felt somewhat Christmas-y as I sat in Second Cup reading John Stott. The raisin scone and americano helped with that feeling too. Things seem more compact in the snow, or else maybe driving these interminable distances to some distant Prairie horizon has led to a shrinking of the city that seems so vast and yet so small at the same time.
Every time I visit a place I find myself wondering "could I live here?" Lately, this has also meant asking the question "could I minister here?" The answer for many places has been "yes". Vancouver, Hong Kong and Singapore are all places I could easily see myself living and working. Edmonton has crept into my conscience over the last several days, and as I talk with people who live here, what strikes me is the lack of alternatives for those seeking something more than Sunday morning solipsism. Thus the question I have been asking myself has now evolved into general feelings of meeting people and feeling them to be "sheep without a shepherd." I wonder if Christ did not go to Rome because he would have been overwhelmed with the teeming multitudes and would have been so busy with healing the sick that he never would have had the opportunity to die.
This is completely unrelated, but I was struck by a song on a CD in my sister's car: Rufus Wainwright's rendition of Shakespeare's Sonnet 29. As I waited to turn left on Whyte Ave., I found myself thinking about the characters I have written and how this song might be a perfect complement to many of the things I have written. There is something deeply moving about the way the cello reverberates a steady river of dusky tones. It put me in the mind of Adam, not dressed to run but running anyway-- with a smile on his face and dashing down the broad sidewalks in lower Central outside the glass and steel Cheung Kong building with the daylight fading and the streetlights just shyly coming in. It was a strange image, but a pleasurable one nonetheless.
There was another image too, of when Adam sees Persie near the end of the book and he can't do anything but feel his heart rupture for her. When Wainwright sings
"Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;"This is Adam staring up at Persie. Though those of you who are reading my book and reading this blog (all, what, two of you?) might have now realized the contrasts between Persie and April, there is something in me, the author, that is inspired by relentless and terrifying beauty. I suppose this is why artists sometimes find themselves muses. Me? I have strange revelations while waiting to turn left from Whyte onto 109.
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