Celebrating the city

I took the boys with me to what is spoken of in hallowed terms as The Jumping Castle Garage. I did this because The Jumping Castle Garage has a car wash. The last traces of our holiday were soaped and sprayed into oblivion and industrially sucked out of the upholstery. Cam and Scott and a handful of other carwash kids romped and bounced and collapsed ecstatically against the grubby green plastic of their inflated fortress. I tried not to think about the diversity of germs to which they were being exposed.

That’s when it struck me: This is what it is, to do life in the city. There are germs. And there are jumping castles.

Small-town, peaceful places surrounded by mountains or farmlands or beaches or bushveld always get me wondering if we shouldn’t chuck it all up and do life smaller and quieter and sans city stress. After all, we have one shot at bringing up kids. One shot at giving them a childhood. The foundations of whatever else they build in their futures will be drilled into the bedrock of that childhood. So, should that childhood be here?

I guess every decision involves a sacrifice.

Choosing to bring up our boys in a city means we’re sacrificing the natural beauty and simplicity of another existence. But if we chose that existence we’d be sacrificing all that a city upbringing has to offer. And if it’s true that God is at work everywhere, then it’s true that his glory is on display in both milking sheds and malls. We can make much of him in a deserted sweeping sea view and we can make much of him in a luminous city skyline.

So tonight (there’s a dog barking somewhere and probably an ADT car doing its slow circuit and I can hear distant traffic above the immediate silence of our streetlamps and windows are lit and content and people who don’t have toddlers are out doing Friday-night things) I’m celebrating quiet parks with old-school jungle gyms secreted away in leafy suburbs. And the thrill of seeing diggers and dumpers and great heaps of red earth magically turned into buildings behind chevron tape. And green gardens and museums and milkshakes and pavements and play dates. These are things my boys love about this city. We’re at peace here despite traffic and electric fencing and splendid pollution sunsets.

And of course it runs much deeper than a list of entertaining things to do, or other pleasing amenities like superb schools and decent doctors. The magnetic effect of the city is the lives with which ours are intricately connected. The city phenomenon – millions of human beings living wall to wall on a particular patch of the planet – presents astonishing – profoundly gratifying – opportunities to invest in peoples’ hearts.

You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father. – Matthew 5:14-16

A spontaneous Bible story session with Maria

A (freezing cold) picnic in Borzoi Park

Other cool memories from the past week or so:

Scotty threw his first proper tantrum. He lay on the floor. Kicked and turned red and everything.

He also carried Lawrence James’ The Rise and Fall of the British Empire into the playroom. Sat down, paged through it reflectively. And made horsey trotting noises every time he glanced at the cover.

I was lecturing Cam about something. He obviously felt he had had enough. So he splayed his right hand on my stomach then drew his fingers together to a point. Repeatedly. Until I stopped. Yip. He was ‘closing’ me like an iPad app.