Last week, a family member shared a sermon with me that they thought I would like. It was all about reclaiming the Christian practice of hospitality as a response to the increased loneliness in society and how the church should be a space that welcomes lost and broken people in. While I agree with this as a starting place, I can't help but feel it didn't go far enough.

I wrote about hospitality in my essay exploring how the church can better relate to the labour rights movement (working together for a mutual flourishing). Key to this is that the church is not meant to be solely the givers of hospitality, but the recipients of it as well.

As we have been discussing thus far, a truly common good requires the mutual flourishing of a diverse relational network of people within a shared context. Yet the complexities of those relationships are often what stand in the way of making this possible. As stated earlier, these relationships are made up of a conflicting web of families, friendships, neighbours, strangers, and enemies. For the church to step into this web in hopes of advocating for an alternative vision for society, it needs a posture that can build partnerships across these differences without diminishing them. For Luke Bretherton, the answer is found in the traditional Christian practice of hospitality; the intentional act of welcoming strangers. He writes that true hospitality “involves listening to and learning from strangers, as this entails forming a relationship with those not like us that we disagree with or find scandalous.” Thus, there is always a risk to hospitality as it requires a willingness to let go of our preconceptions and assumptions of how things ought to go. When we listen to and learn from those who are unlike ourselves we are necessarily changed. Importantly, hospitality is also something that the church can both give and receive. This is a theme that Cavanough picks up in an essay on mobility and how the church might consider how it ‘moves’ through the world. He offers two metaphors, those of pilgrim and monk, as a way for the church to see itself both as those who travel in solidarity with others, receiving hospitality along the way; and as those who remain in place, offering hospitality to others. That second one, the role of monk, invites the church to work with others to “build strong local communities and cooperative social arrangements deeply rooted in their places.” In this sense, hospitality itself becomes a form of common good that works across our differences to build more welcoming communities. It also helps us resist the assumption that we encounter each other as equals, teaching us to pay greater awareness to the relational imbalances that exist.

This isn't meant to be a criticism towards the sermon, more to say that I think for the church to have a healthy relationship to the surrounding society it needs to not see itself only as having something to offer—but also a humility to learn and be equally changed as it builds relationships for the mutual flourishing of our world.

In an opinion piece in the Guardian today, Maggie Zhou asks an important question: are we normalizing tech surveillance?

In the article, she's predominantly addressing wearable surveillance tech—such as Meta's AI Glasses—but its a question with wider implications. It's something I think about every time I hear of people sharing doorbell cam footage on social media, alerting others to the presence of suspicious individuals or wayward youths up to no good on their street. Doorbells cams have become prolific in most neighbourhoods around me. Many homes are even outfitted with little signs gleefully declaring, smile, you're on camera. Never mind that I'm on the sidewalk and I did not consent to this.

All of this is done in the name of security. But rarely do we pause and ask security for who? Whose security are we prioritizing and whose are we putting at risk? Zhou does indeed raise this by pointing out that wearable surveillance tech puts women and girls at a disproportionate risk for indecent filming. Meanwhile, doorbell cams and other home surveillance often further stigmatize already marginalized people. And sharing images of people online, especially youth, for the purpose of stoking anxiety, fear, or rage can have serious consequences.

These products are marketed as a preventative measure, "stopping crime before it happens." However, maybe the only thing they are preventing is a sense community trust and hospitality.

In keeping with the urban theory reading self-guided reading course I'm doing, I thought I'd take a brief sidestep here for a bit of theological take on the topic. It is Sunday after all...

A few years back I read a book on the theology of the built environment by T.J. Gorringe. It's worth noting that my interest in urbanism in large part came from my mdiv where I was taught to see theology as a contextual project, not something that just exists outside of time and space. Not only that, but my professor (and the founder of the particular program I took, Donald Goertz, always said that the bible was primarily urban in nature. Anyways, as a part of one of my directed reading courses, I read this particular book and I thought it might be nice to just share a thought from it today that also builds off Mumford's work on the origin of cities.

Gorringe here is riffing off Mumford and considering how cities do or do not participate in the economy of redemption, that is, creating something that lasts for the betterment of the world.

"If Mumford is right, the Hellenistic city effectively built to celebrate its own achievements, as did Imperial Rome. This ought to be a warning to us, for today we wander about in their ruins. For what gave a new lease of life to Rome was Christianity without which, at several points in the past two millennia, it would probably not have survived. Cities necessarily have markets; they are centres of the arts and of innovation. But without a creative spirituality, a sense of transcendent purpose, they die."

I've always kind of liked the idea that cities have a soul, so to speak, and like people, that soul can be nurtured or starved. I think this puts it in an interesting framing, calling it a transcendent purpose. Going back a few days to what I was reflecting on with Mumford in the way that cities began as spaces for ritual and memory, I think it's interesting to consider what gives a city that spark. We sort of intuitively know when we visit a city that has it. It feels alive and exciting. It might also be why suburban sprawl can feel so soulless, they lack a transcendent purpose.

'Walkability' can be a bit of a moving target.

On the one hand, my community ranks near the bottom of Ontario cities walkability scores (13/100). On the other, I've always been okay walking further than what most people would consider convenient. I think anything under 3km is a completely reasonable distance to walk to something. That said, I'm relatively healthy and able bodied. I'm not pushing a stroller and my kids are old enough to ride their own bikes. So my version of walkable is certainly not applicable to everyone.

This is where I find something like Jeff Speck's theory of walkability helpful. Rather than focus on distance, he points to four key conditions: a walk should be useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting. Importantly, these conditions should be able to be felt by everyone, regardless of age, need, or ability. Imagine if cities began with this sort of mandate for planning. Instead of walking being an afterthought or given the bare minimum of attention, let's make it the starting point for how we think about movement in our cities.

After all, it's not only good for our health and wellbeing, it's also directly related to increased property values and attracting and retaining young families.

"Urban ugliness is often a by-product of municipal structures and utilities that were built with function, not people, in mind."

— Janette Sadik-Khan, Street Fight.

It's wild to me how radicalized I have become around the concept of what a street can be.

For a long time, this was not something I ever thought about. I just assumed the way streets were designed was the only way the could be. I barely questioned it because it served my primary purpose, getting me around efficiently in my car. At some point in my late twenties, something changed. I think I just got tired of driving everywhere. I found being behind the wheel of a car stressful and so I decided to try other ways of getting around. The more I walked and tried out the different transit options, the more attuned I became to how poorly designed it all was for anyone who wasn't in a car.

I believe if you want to understand where you live, you have to walk it. You have to experience what movement through your community is like when you're not in a car. Pay attention to how safe or unsafe you feel in certain areas. How easy is it to get from one place to another?

Something I'm now beginning to pay more attention to is how space is allocated and recognizing that it doesn't have to be this way.