This Is Our City

Along more general lines, most lawyers strive to be objective and to weigh competing concerns without displaying emotion, and we also have an ability to live in the grey in many areas, which I think is important when talking about the transcendent holiness and mystery of the Lord.

When it comes to my writing, I think legal writing requires clarity. When I was in law school, we were taught that adverbs were "needless words" (in the words of Strunk & White), so I rarely use them. I also rarely use exclamation marks. My goal is to be clear and concise. [Editor's note: Jenkins has good precedent in going to White; it was E. B. himself who wrote the seminal "Here Is New York," a robust and pithy 1947 survey of what makes New York vibrant.]

If the Park Forum weren't already based on the park, what would you name it?

In spring 2009, I was running in Central Park, and it was the first nice day of spring. And it was packed. And it was probably a weekend, so it was extra crowded.

And I got this phrase: "As the park is to the city, so the Word is to life." I had that phrase before the name. After the long, dead winter in the city, this is where people come. And that's what I wanted. I wanted that symbol for city people. We don't have backyards or grill-outs.

The bad part of the park—and I'm pretty passionate about this—is that people will take a picture of nature and post it on Instagram and say, "Isn't God good?" And that's true, but God is in you and in me, sinful human beings. That's where he placed his image. Even more than in this park.

So in some way, it might be the subway—a subway car. Because, as Tim Keller says, there's more square inch of the image of God in a subway car than most other places.

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