08/10/2025
Cities are structures of fear. That's been apparent these past eight weeks as I've had to leave our home in a rural area outside of Carrollton and get my cancer treatments in Atlanta. The image here is from the 10th floor of the Emory Winship Cancer Institute–where I received chemo infusions each week.
Happily, the treatments are over and I am healing in the relative peace of the rural setting of our home (including the pictured trail where i like to walk). But the contrast between urban and rural is very much on my mind.
Of course, cities have opportunities and resources that make them attractive. I needed to go to 'the big city' to receive the high -tech medical treatments for my condition. Similarly, people are drawn to a city like Atlanta because there are jobs and cultural offerings that are just not available in small towns and rural areas.
Walking the streets of Atlanta during the week, it was wondrous to see all of the restaurants, galleries, and experience the diversity of the people!
To make a city like Atlanta be functional at all takes a high level planning: those who design and build the infrastructure necessary to accommodate millions of people–including utilities and roads and then the individual high-rise apartments, condos and office towers.
Any kind of human endeavor takes planning. But the level of planning in cities is particularly concentrated or else you get chaos. And with millions of people living and working within a relatively small space, you get a lot of individuals each planning their schedules and trying to live in an ordered way.
Planning is something we need to do as humans. But any kind of planning includes a level of fear or concern: If I don't do 'x' then something undesirable will happen. I won't get what I want–the income, comfort, or future that I idealize. Multiply that by millions of people in a city like Atlanta and you have a lot of fear!
Not everyone can live in the country and even in the country, to the extent that we plan our lives or find ourselves in homes placed however far apart, we still are engaging in a level of fear or concern.
All of us–rural or small town dwellers up to the more urban/urbane need a respite from the fear and concern that comes with being human. That begins to drop away as we find ourselves in the wild order of nature or the 'other than human.' That's when we get beyond the structures of fear–however wondrous–and begin to touch something eternal, mysterious, and far beyond our human concerns. That's also the realm of heart and spirit. More about that to come!
