Terra Firma

I love living in Chicago, here's why in part: it's easy to feel connected to the nuts and bolts of the city. You can walk to the el station hop on a train, ride, look, read, disembark, walk to your destination. The sights and smells and blustery wind are up close and personal. The senses have time to calibrate the environment. This is in contrast to other places I have lived, where it is necessary to put on one's coat, walk to one's car (or if you're lucky, out to the garage to your car), get in, drive in said car (all the while hopefully paying attention to the road!) and then get out at your destination and scurry back indoors. It's possible to miss out on the feeling of being alive and moving around during the ten minute drive to where you're going. I am not debunking cars, I thank the Lord for cars and the fact that a trip to the store is not a day's journey with horse and buggy. But there's the rub - we can go more places, faster, and somehow we subliminally get the message that we should use our time in just such a way, running to and fro as quickly as possible. If you haven't noticed, it's pretty tiring and not terribly satisfying. But April, you will say, these are necessary evils. We can contribute to some of the virtues of a capitalist society by the fact that we can buy the same paper towels at one store for less money than at this other store. Be that as it may, and I will grant it, there are many goodly things to be appreciated in a day, and I don't want to miss too many - not so much to amuse myself, as to appreciate the smallest bits of God's goodness.