A reflection after a semester in Chicago:
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| Pruitt Igoe |
How long does it take a flower to grow
After they teared down Pruitt Igoe*?
This question and many others am I left with
After finishing a semester in Chicago.
Questions and less answers.
Paul said don’t be discouraged when it seems like
The more you learn the more questions you have.
The first article we read for class was by “Flyvbjerg”,
His questions became our companions the whole semester
Framing the way we saw, understood and felt the city.
The first question asks; where are we going?
I remember a Jesus People leader asking what do you mean by we?
We the city, the people, me and others.
Where was I going?
To Chicago for a whole semester
To learn and seek what it means to live in an American city
Apart form Wheaton
Apart from what I knew.
Where was the city going?
What were her trends?
Falling test scores, Election year,
Loosing jobs, Building condos,
Number of deaths caused by guns-soaring
Population growing,
Artists exploring; leaving their mark,
yuppies immigrants children elderly
People, like birds, flocking to the city
Flyvbjerg's second question asks; who wins and who looses?
The poor, the needy, the sick
The most vulnerable often loose
Respect, understanding, love, care.
The rich, the privileged, the lighter ethnicity
Those with power often win
Respect, understanding, love, care.
But my exploration did not stop there
I considered the school I volunteered in
The 24 kindergardeners who are lucky to have
The best Chicago Public School teacher,
They win.
The one kindergardener who lives in a homeless shelter
Who is showered, dressed, checked for lice
By school nurse each morning
She looses.
A man gives up his seat for a young, pregnant women on the bus
She wins.
I say “I’m sorry” to the woman with her whole life in a grocery kart
“I don’t have any change”
She looses.
I see a brick-red Starbucks covered in green ivy
And I wonder who wins and who looses by what mechanisms of power?
Flyvbjerg’s third question asks; is this desirable?
How can I answer that?
Are you serious?
Of course poverty, isolation, and violence
is not desired.
But if something is not desirable what is my response?
Flyvbjerg's final question leads to action
He asks; what should be done?
not could, not may, not maybe
But should
This question pulled at my gut
What can I do?
Do I matter in light of these grand enormous schemes of humanity
How can I celebrate and rejoice and also grieve and comprehend the truth?
How do I live in this tension?
The pull between Christ’s new earth coming and yet - not yet here
Where do I find hope?
Flyvbjerg's last question of action
Can only be delivered with the hope of Justice
True Justice and shalom
God’s peace on earth.
“And the Spirit and the bride say, Come
And let him that is a thirst come ...
Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
But I your bride do not wait in vain.
I will not cease to cry, and to laugh
To do Your will
To bring Your shalom here in the city.
Let me be as if Your right hand
Use me, use us, your body as You make all things new.
*Pruitt-Igoe was a large urban public housing project first occupied in 1954 in St. Louis, Missouri. By the late 1960’s, the project became infamous for its desperate poverty, crime, and segregation. The conditions stedially declined, and eventually the 33 buildings were torn down in the mid-1970’s. The project is often refered to as a “failure,” however the explanations for this faliure are complex and controversal.
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