Where Am I? The Middle-Class Crisis of Place
What spiritual disciplines will help us better see our city's beauty and brokenness?
The more deeply we are centered in Christ, the more we will be able to be attentive to what is in our own backyard. In his book Until Justice and Peace Embrace, Nicholas Wolterstorff notes that we spend most of our working lives in the midst of cities, but we are not attentive to them to see if they are places of human flourishing. What will it take for us to become more attentive? Becoming more focused and more concerned about our neighbor—not the box house next door but poor people struggling to survive in the inner city.
We need a spirituality that will undermine Western individualism.
I hope this book will stimulate much more work and practice in this area, but also that people will sense the joyful possibilities of placemaking. You don't have to wait to start practicing place in a healthy today.
Halee Gray Scott teaches spiritual formation and leadership at Wesley Seminary and theology at A. W. Tozer Seminary.
Christianity Today magazine recently reviewed Where Mortals Dwell.
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Grady Walton
As an extreme introvert my eyes glaze over on stories like this. But even I must admit a longing for place, especially in the church where it seems like people pass through like parts on a factory conveyor belt. I was in one church where nearly the entire congregation turned over in five years. Pastors, as well, seem to come and go with the wind. Churches that struggle to find a permanent physical place seem to bleed people each time they move. That can't be healthy. Sure, there are times when it's right to move, but I think we might be too casual about our sense of place in the community.
RICK DALBEY
Wright's emphasis is wrong, not biblical. It is liberal theology baptized with Christian jargon. Of course we have an obligation to be responsible and use the earth's resources wisely but here we have no continuing city.
RICK DALBEY
This place is temporary, it is passing away. As the author of Hebrews says, “For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.” We are “looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” NT Wright notwithstanding, We are “strangers and exiles on the earth. For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own.” “they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.” The old gospel song says, “This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through, my treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue”.