| | Southern Californian Suburbia—The Cultural End of the World
Thoughts I Had While on Holiday in Europe - Part 2
First,
forgive me of any over-simplifications that follow. I’m blogging, not
writing a doctoral dissertation (some may disagree), so I’m trying to
get to my point as quickly as possible ...
As I understand it, humanity
was born in the middle of the world, what we now call the middle-east
should probably in all fairness just be called the middle. Eden,
Mesopotamia, Egypt, Babylon, Jerusalem, those that live there are
correct, that region is the navel of the world.
From there civilization
spread, east and west, across the globe. I am a part of the history of
western culture, and if you think it through, I am a long, long, way
from home. So far from home that if you go any farther west from where
I live you’ll find yourself in the east. In that sense, the western
coast of North America is the far western edge of the western world. Until we colonize another planet, it
ends here.
Picture a journey. The long
trek that western culture has made in the last twenty-five hundred
years. First through continental Europe, to Britain, then to the
Americas. From the New England colonies west to the Mississippi, and
then the great trek through the wild west to the Gold Coast.
Now picture western culture
with a pocket full of coins, each one representing a piece of its rich
cultural tradition. But the pocket has a hole, and as it journeys west,
one by one, the coins drop out. The farther the journey, the fewer
traditions remain.
I love history, and last week
I stood in London watching a new office building being constructed less
than a stone’s throw from St. James park. I felt a twinge of pain
knowing that some two hundred (or more) year old buildings gave their lives
for this tower. There’s little room to build new things in ancient
places like Britain without somehow tearing down history, and history
is so very, very important.
Not so in California. My house stands in the one of
the oldest neighborhoods in the Conejo Valley. It was built in 1960, in California terms, virtually a historic landmark. Of
course there are older structures in California, but don’t waste
your time looking for many neighborhoods celebrating their bicentennial. Apart
from the Spanish missions from which many of our cities are named, they
just aren’t there. Yes, compared to the rest of the western world,
sunny suburban California is a cultural desert. I have regularly and derisively used
words like antiseptic, sterile, void, black-hole, to describe what is
not here ...
... and therein lies the answer.
If you were a scientist, an
inventor, a futurist, a creator looking to create something new,
looking for “space” and a “laboratory” to conduct your experiments in,
then words like sterile, antiseptic, and void would not be offensive
but rather very, very, appealing. Add to that the fact that somehow Los
Angeles, for all that it is not (and if you know the history of the
movie industry, because of all that it was not) has become the media nerve center of the western world.
And so, for me, here is a
sliver of an answer as to what God might be doing with me here in the
desert. Perhaps it’s not a punishment after all. Perhaps I’ve not been
exiled to the wastelands but rather assigned to the lab. A place where
I can be a part of building something new without expending too much
effort tearing down what was.
Perhaps, and if that is truly
the case, then I am truly thankful and excited about what gets cooked
up next. If a VOX Café can succeed in its mission to Thousand Oaks,
then perhaps we can export it via the connectedness of Los Angeles to
the rest of the western world. And with it, the hope of connecting
people to people, and people to God.
So, here at the halfway point of my journey (I turned 40 today), hope survives. I heard 40 is the new 25. Feels like it to me.
Thanks for listening.
|
| | Posted 1/11/2006 7:57 AM - 48 Views - 14 eProps - 14 comments
- recommend
  - recs0
- share
- email
 - sent0
|
