Just Where Should We Go? 4-6-10

Birmingham, Alabama

It is rather interesting to return to a city I lived in for many years, after a lapse of twenty years, not even visiting here in a decade. In the intervening epoch the city has changed radically. To the south, regions that were once pristine unbroken rural vistas have become victims of urban sprawl. Infected with the fungus of commercial blight with its attendant chaos of billboards, LED message boards, and unremitting traffic, memories of verdant countryside fade a bit further into obscurity. I see no evidence of working farms or ranches. Myriad little housing developments are excreted onto former pastureland.

While helping friends look for another house, I had reason to visit a lot of these little urban metastases. They were devoid of people and had a powerful sense of being shop-worn, despite being built in the time since I moved from here twenty years ago. Houses were open to the weather and rotting. Even high end developments feel empty and barren. I wonder what it is people are looking for in these places. It certainly doesn’t seem to be community. They all seem to be looking for something somewhere else. It’s all for sale. Garage doors were closed and no one was out walking in the afternoon or evening on cerulean spring days.

So very strange is the city itself. From the time I first moved to Birmingham in 1979, I was struck by how afraid people were of the downtown region, evidenced by a sense of desertion even on weekdays at lunch time. I was downtown on Sunday night and was appalled at the utter absence of people. It was as if the city had been evacuated, miles of it. Returning there on Monday at mid day on a brilliant spring day, the imagery was even more startling. There simply were no people out and about. No hot dog vendors, no guys dispensing therapy with their coffees, no sidewalk kiosks. Apparently, fear has only increased during the past decade. Imagery of vibrant European cities with their millions of pedestrians could not be further from this present reality.

While attending a rather splendid service in the Advent Cathedral it was unsettling that uniformed armed policemen were hovering around the church entrance and the worship hall for the whole of our time there. I have no recollection of previously being protected in a church by police, not even in Papa Doc’s Haiti or post-Sukarno Indonesia. The police officers were well known to those present and obviously this was regular duty for them. Happily, these men were well trained and most polite to all of us. But somehow having men wearing 9 mm Glocks and tazers does something to the equanimity of one’s worship experience.

On Saturday on one of those first glorious days of spring when winter’s frustration are relieved by flowering plants and trees in bountiful colorful fashion, we went to a vast state park fifteen minutes south of the city. Amazingly, it was essentially deserted. What are all of the million plus people living here doing on a glorious Saturday? A friend of mine here did not want to see me. She described sleeping through the entirety of a magnificent Saturday. Lots of people are on anti-depressants. The chicken and egg scenario comes to mind. Do urban dwellers stay inside because they are depressed or do they get depressed because they stay inside?

Perhaps it stems from living in a very small semi-rural context for twenty years, but there is a powerful absence of spatial focus to this place. All these small housing developments and commercial strip malls along country roads seem so visually and physically disconnected and unfocused. I am reminded of David Kunstler’s thought provoking Geography of Nowhere, a poignant look at American city life and the complete lack of scale and context in which to live meaningful connected lives with each other. Here in the city one can be completely anonymous without effort. I think of the context I am presently living in, how I can hardly go anywhere at all and not encounter countless people I know; many of them very dear, how even going for a morning bike ride at sunrise will often yield a fine companion. Where I exercise, worship, read, volunteer, learn, play, work, get entertained; all are walking distance from where I sleep. Perhaps it really is true – there is no place like home. Perhaps more of us need to think about what home really is. Suddenly, I wonder why I have embarked on this journey that is going to take me over eight time zones, perhaps a couple of credit limits, and a few months.

I am reminded of the inspiration motivational story called “Acres of Diamonds”, depicting an African diamond miner who spends decades rutting in the mud and rock of South Africa, hunting for those brilliant orbs that promise liberation from his misery. Exhausted, penniless, and without hope, he go backs to his little hut on the river, only to see a glint in the morning light. There he finds underfoot that which he had ranged far and wide to find.

Perhaps it is time to go home.