I’ve been reading books about nature lately—the Serviceberry and the God of the Garden. They’ve got me thinking about wilderness and nature and plants and trees. I love nature, but I live in a city.
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| Looking down from hike above our little city |
Our city has only 20,000-40,000 people in it. Not much of a city, you might say. But everyone who comes to visit us comments on how urban it feels. Our city may be small but it is also densely packed. If you ask wikipedia it will say that our city is 12 square miles. That is ludicrous. I can walk around the entire city in about an hour, there is no way the city is 12 square miles. So with a little help from google maps I tried to determine a more accurate size of the city. My results: about ½ a square mile. Crunch 40,000 people into ½ a square mile and you get a population density of 80,000 per square mile!!! According toWikipedia that’s higher than the density of Manhattan with all it’s skyscrapers and high rise apartments.
So the city is small—tiny even—but it is very much a city. Complete with honking cars and motorcycles, traffic jams, concrete jungles, crime, trash and people everywhere—people laughing, yelling, crying, fighting, moving, talking, visiting, and doing business. There is little beauty to be found here. The city is poor so there is little budget for fixing things, let alone beautifying the surroundings. Roads are broken down. Houses are broken down. Crumbling concrete and rusty tin are a constant. Paint jobs don’t last because of a combination of low quality paint, harsh ocean salt breezes and a relentless tropical sun. Trash is everywhere, so ever-present that people hardly notice it. Cars and trucks are not required to pass inspections, so many of them belch out back, white or blue smoke. In certain places they burn piles of trash. There used to be rivers here, but they have dried up and in an effort to keep people from making the river bed a trash dump, in many places the river access has been boarded up. You wouldn’t even know there was a river there anymore. All of this is disheartening. All of this can feel quite ugly.
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| Beautiful sky and silhouette of distant volcano |
There are two great respites from all of this ugliness. The first is to look up. The city sits in a coastal plain, beneath towering green volcanic mountains. These mountains are often skirted by clouds with a brilliant blue sky behind them. One need only look up and find some hope. Or you can turn around and look in the other direction—out to sea. The ocean is always changing. It can be blue or gray, flecked with white caps or sparkling and shimmering like glitter. The view is framed by the edges of the island on either side, and at certain times of day, you can even see the mighty active volcano on Volcano island rising out of the sea. It is most idyllic at sunset, but it is always beautiful. There is beauty to be found here.
The other great respite is found in faces. The neighbors who smile at us and greet us as we pass by. The children shouting “bonjour” and then running away laughing. The babies crying, crawling, nursing, sleeping. The old men and old women who speak blessings as soon as they hear your voice. This is the part I would like to talk more about to those nature writers. I love a tree and a wilderness and a walk in the woods. I hate to see wild places decimated to make way for houses or farm land. My heart breaks with the way our tiny island is being used up, scarred, ruined, trashed. And yet, this is where the people are. Forty-thousand people scrunched up on one another. People who—like all the trees and plants of the garden—need light and water and care. Many of them are bruised and broken and dying. Where are the gardeners, people wiling to bring light and nourishing care to those that need it? Have they gone off to the country side, where everything looks beautiful and growing things is easy? Where they can breath fresh air and drink in bird song and forget about these hard, ugly concrete monstrosities, full of beautiful, needy people? Maybe they go with a bit of regret, sighing for those far off ugly places called cities.
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| Porch plant! |
I grow plants on our porch. It helps. It is one more respite. Sometimes they thrive. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes I am faithful to water and tend them. Sometimes I neglect them. I love to see new growth. I love cutting away what is dead so that things are only green and beautiful. I love to see the occasional flower. I’ve had plants die for lack of water or too much sun. I’ve also had some die by violence - killed by children, hungry goats, or over-watering. I like to think that if plants can grow and beautify my porch, then the city itself can change. Oh it will take time—to bring life and trees and hope to these people. But I choose the ugly city because this is where the people are. This is where opportunities abound. I love the country. But the people of the city call to me. I need to get away from the city from time to time—I must, but I cannot leave them. They need me and I find that I need them.
PRAYERS ANSWERED
We are thankful for an island sister opening up her home to more gatherings and inviting us to attend from time to time. Our teammate got back and we were happy to reconnect with her. Unfortunately, she was sick the last few days of her break, but we are thankful that she was getting over it. We were able to talk to all our kids this week and happy to hear some good reports from them. We traveled to the continent for meetings and got to attend an encouraging gathering of fellow workers on our way through the big island. We had safe travels and meetings are going well. We are very privileged to work with people from all across the world including many from the African continent. We are so thankful to be able to work with and learn from them.
PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray for our city, that it would be transformed, both its ecology and its people. Pray for continued reconciliation from the recent controversy among the island family, there is still some bridge building and relationship work that needs to happen. Pray for us as we talk about some new responsibilities and connect with people at our meetings this week. Pray for us to have humility and love and to grow in unity. Pray that the women's gathering would happen this week and that it would be well attended.
