how to read a narrative

here's a great list of 10 questions on how to read narrative (biblical or otherwise).

1. who is the hero?
   
2. what constitutes the quest?
   
3. who are the helpers and the antagonists? (this can include people as well as factors)
   
4. do you sense the presence of the narrator anywhere in the text?
   
5. what does the narrator do with the chronology of the events?
   
6. what happens with the narrated time? (does it speed up, slow down, stop, are there gaps?)
   
7. is the plot clear on its own, or is it only understandable within a larger narrative? (if the latter, what is the macroplot?)
   
8. what can you say about the dialogues?*
   
9. what word choices or other style/structure characteristics strike you?
   
10. how is the unit divided? are there further subdivisions?

* i don't think the order is important, yet it is interesting that this comes so far down.

This list is adapted from Jan Fokkelman, Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide (Louisville, K.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999 ET), as quoted in Provan, Long and Longman, A Biblical History of Israel (also Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), p90.

I was reading aBHoI as I think some more about narrative and history.

my question is: to what extent is it necessary to pursue/argue for/maintain the historicity of the claims to make sense of the text, particularly as one seeks to live a godly life in response to scripture? They (ch4 is mainly V. Philips Long's) argue that because biblical narratives make historical truth claims, 'ahistorical readings are perforce false misreadings' (p81).

i want to think some more on this.

patients and clients

i've been meaning to write about this for a while now.

when i went to university the first time round, one of the first things we were told is that we didn't have patients anymore, we had clients. and we all nodded, recognising we weren't splint-makers, but health-service providers. we had an important task to work out in concert with our clients which services best fitted their needs. no more were we caring for, looking after, or helping people. we were professionals.

in the olden days, prosthetist-orthotists like me, wouldn't have been like me. they would most likely have been war veterans, with at the very least one prosthesis. their patients would have been people who lost their legs a little later than them, and, chances are, if they were up to it, would've been trained up to help the next lot.

but today, we're university educated, with a nice piece of paper, and we are the clients' health service providers.


i think my question is, what does this change in nomenclature mean for a) the way we treat patients, and b) for their expectations of us?

the words patient, treat, care, look after - all imply that there is something wrong. that there is something that needs to be made right. it is not about wants but needs. this doesn't mean the needs will always be met, that we will work toward goals, but if someone has lost a leg, their need is to be able to walk again, even if a wheelchair may be the best outcome considering various factors.

but the words client, health-service provider, management, service, imply a contractual relationship, where one's services are engaged for a particular agreed-upon purpose. the sense of caring for someone who unable is gone.

likewise, the recent don't dis- my -ability campaign baffles me. i get what it's saying. but, if i may make a tandem point (this is a blog, after all), part of being in community is helping those who need help. we (should) help people with prams on and off buses, we (should) give up our seats for others. yes, you can crawl the kokoda track, but why should that ever make it condescending for someone to offer or to receive assistance from a fellow human being.

after all, the worth of a person is not in what they can or can't do, or how many functioning limbs they have. but our value is in our created-ness, our innate image-bearing. and indeed, it is often those with so little who contribute so much - triumphing over adversity to achieve the unachievable.

in my short time working in the health-care industry, i have served patients from all walks of life - homeless, teachers, public officials, artists - and compassion, care and serving those unable to serve themselves has been what has driven the same level of care for all.

the road to clients is a road that means the end of multi-disciplinary teams, the end of public health care, the end of sympathy.

Those who are well have no need of a doctor, but those who are sick. Mark 2.17

you might want to make your own extrapolations for what this means in a ministry context.

doubt

æ has written a great post, 10 thoughts about doubt

i added my own thought in the comments there, but thought i'd expand on it here:

doubt often drives us in the wrong direction. when we are faced with doubt, we tend to withdraw from those who (we think) don't doubt, not sharing with them. the people who are most likely to know what we're feeling, and to have been through what we're going through, are often ironically the last ones we share with.
and instead of being driven back to the bible to recall what we first believed, we read material of those we think are fellow doubters, but who never shared out faith in the first place. so if we are wondering about evil, we read 'God is not great'. if we wonder about whether we were brainwashed as a child, we read 'The God Delusion'.
in doubt, which happens to all, we need to go back to first principles. speak with, or read the thoughts of, fellow believers who have shared your doubts - what got them through? why did they believe despite their tragedy? how did they survive their philosophy degree without giving up hope?

projected project

a couple of years ago i read a bit of Paul Ricœur at a reading group, from figuring the sacred. i didn't understand much, but over the next couple of years at college i kept trying to read him, using him for essays on the historical fall and historicity versus theological intent.

broadly speaking, he's been really stimulating for my thinking about hermeneutics - how we read the bible. Ricœur's big thing, best understood in contrast, is an hermeneutic of trust, not one of suspicion.

so what i hope to do is look at his work, and think about how some other guys in the hermeneutics field do it - people like Brevard Childs, John Goldingay, Walter Brueggemann, Francis Watson.

it doesn't mean i fully get him yet, nor do i expect to after this year. but i hope to be challenged about how to read the old and new testaments on their own and together, and to be able to keep pushing others to do their own thinking.

carbon tax

my initial response to the carbon tax is ... yay!
the increases in the price of electricity and petrol will hopefully force us to be energy wise, and less car-reliant.

my hesitation is that this is just a tax dressed up in green. how many dollars of tax to be paid by the industrial polluters will be refunded them in subsidies? i fear that it will be almost 1 for 1.

and this carbon tax will only be appropriate if the money is used in helping rehabilitate the world we've polluted, and in investment in green energy sources, in particular solar.

Jesus the Leper

three thoughts on Mark 1.40-45

1

people with disfiguring skin ailments weren't allowed in camp with the rest of Israel, they had to be outside the camp, in desolate places, calling 'Unclean! Unclean!' to warn people away from them. (See Lev 13)

Jesus met such a person, and what is particularly striking is the way he took the man's place. the man is unclean, outcast, rejected, excluded - and Mark tells us Jesus was himself in such a place, where he met the man, and remained in that place. yet the man was healed, cleansed, and was able to join again into his society.

furthermore, Jesus was killed, cursed, and buried outside the city walls. the life the man was condemned to live Jesus took.

2

after Jesus healed the man he told him to present himself to the priest, to fulfil the law in offering the appropriate sacrifices. (See Lev 14) but we are told by Mark, he instead went and told people about Jesus.

i wonder whether the reason he didn't offer a sacrifice is because the true sacrifice was standing there right in front of him. he was both physically clean, yet through faith he understood that Jesus also had cleansed him on the inside.

3

the issue of the messianic secret pops up here also. for the uninitiated (and please correct me if i've remembered this wrong), this is the idea suggested by Wrede that Jesus was a failed messiah, like many others. therefore he wanted to keep the whole subject secret. this explains why it was only after his death (and particularly with Paul's missionary activity) that people began to acknowledge him as the messiah.

this was countered by others who read the synoptic gospels as primarily historical, and that if Jesus told people to say nothing, then that's what he did. the reason? he had a plan, and being outed as the messiah anytime before 'the hour' was not on - he had his own divine schedule and it was the resurrection, rather than any miracles or preaching, that would reveal his true identity.

from a narrative position, i wonder whether the messianic secret is there for the benefit of the readers. as we read him telling people not to tell anyone, we say - as if you couldn't! it's obvious who he is! what excuse could an ex-leper make to explain his healing?! - reinforcing in the reader who we know Jesus to be - the messiah, the beloved son of God.



looking forward to Dave's talk on Mark 1.40-45 this sunday at wildstreet@5 - see what he has to say!

Ricoeur on Evil

i'm still reading through Paul Ricoeur's Figuring the Sacred (Augsburg Fortress, 1995), but i really liked this on evil in the introduction:

While the Bible does offer a theodicy of retribution in which the victims, because of their faithlessness, are held responsible for the violence inflicted upon them, Ricoeur argues instead for a wisdom theodicy of lamentation and anger where the perennial cries of Why me? and How long? are seen as the most adequate responses to unmitigated evil.
Mark I. Wallace, introduction, Figuring the Sacred, p32.

having read David Bentley Hart on evil (the doors of the sea) and Miroslav Volf on forgiveness (exclusion and embrace), this is close to where Hart ends up (for whom God is always opposed to evil) - and quite different to Volf (who emphasises the responsibility of both the perpetrator and victim in seeking reconciliation).

i like the way he's not systematising, but using the bible's language we see in the context of suffering in evil.

hebrews + matthew OR zechariah

i gots to decide - one year of college left, and i need to choose between OT in hebrew (where we do the entirety of Zechariah) or NT in greek (where we do Hebrews then Matthew). i could do both but that knocks out an elective and doing a project means i can only do two electives.

so far we've done
(nb: eng means only eng, heb or gk means both)

• OT
  Numbers (eng)
  Deuteronomy (heb)
  1-2 Samuel (heb)
  Psalms (heb)
  Job (eng)
  Isaiah (eng)
  Ezekiel (heb)
  Daniel (eng)
  Jonah (eng)
  

i'm hoping to do aramaic as one elective, so that would mean i'd get to do the aramaic section of Daniel and the aramaic paragraph of Ezra. we also did a bit of Ruth in hebrew, but just to think about text criticism.

• NT
  Mark (gk)
  Luke (gk)
  John (gk)
  Acts (gk)
  Romans (gk)
  1 Corinthians (gk)
  Ephesians (eng)
  1-2 Timothy (eng)
  Titus (eng)
  1 Peter (eng)
  Jude (eng)

reasons for NT4

1. can complete the quadrafecta (quadrilla?) of gospels
   
2. can study a non-Pauline epistle in greek
   
3. long term in ministry greek will probably be used more - and i'm more likely to take it for granted (i.e. i should keep working on it this year)
   
4. i i don't think i'll do ATBGE (advanced topics in biblical greek exegesis - or simply, nerd greek), but i plan to audit it
   
5. doing aramaic means i'll be doing a language related to hebrew anyway

reasons for OT4

1. we can do a whole book of the bible in an original language - everything else has been overview, with a deeper focus on particular areas only
   
2. zech is a pretty crucial book in the NT (particularly matthew i think)
   
3. it's my last chance to study in hebrew - i don't think any masters subjects are in hebrew, only greek
   
4. it'd probably make sense to keep hebrew up whilst learning aramaic

so that's my thinking. what do you think, faithful reader(s?)?

book reading tizzy

i've loved getting my head into some books of late.
first came Gulliver's Travels (via gutenburg.org), then i finished off Calvin's Institutes, then Ben Elton's Inconceivable, then the diary of Anne Frank, then a penguin excerpt from Herodotus, Xerxes Invades Greece.

Gulliver was great, particularly as i'd only ever read a dumbed-down version of the first part, the voyage to Lilliput (which the supposed abomination of a film is broadly based on). what was striking was the decline in humanity evidenced in each of the four parts. the God-fearer Swift was interested to show the absolute depravity of man, which is revealed bit-by-bit throughout. indeed, by the end of the book (SPOILER ALERT) Gulliver cannot stand the sight nor smell of others of his species, so disappointed is he with the race he was unfortunate enough to be born of.

Calvin was long. and often concerned with defending orthodox Christianity against people who are long-gone and arguments long-forgotten. i was struck with his thoughts on baptism, as well as confirmation, which i will write about soon. i'll probably have to read it all again when i finish college - the beginning, read two years ago on the bus, is a distant memory.

Elton is a great writer, whether for TV or his novels. he did a great job in this book of making the whole vibe associated with trying to conceive a heck of a lot lighter. this isn't why i was reading it - but the depths of despair i understand can be associated with this issue, when cut with Elton's humour, couldn't hurt. i think...

Anne Frank was great. seeing the war from a little teeny-bopper's perspective (i refuse to say tweenager) was very different. i've talked to people who were her age but in Australia (my nan) - a thoroughly different perspective - as well as someone her age in Germany (my Gast-Oma). it's funny to think that they probably all would've gotten along well. what i found hard reading it was as the dates got closer to (SPOILER ALERT) her being found and taken to a concentration camp was her ignorance. the last entry shows her to be a typical selfish child - like all 14 year old girls the world over since time immemorial - who just happens to be in hiding with seven others in Nazi-occupied Holland. so she whinges to her diary - and that's it. no warning. the hagiography in the beginning of the book was a bit odd, yet not unexpected. but a great example of the pointlessness of war, greed, xenophobia, that catches all and sundry up in its wake.

finally, Xerxes. this is where the inspiration for the movie the 300 came from. a couple of years ago i read Thucydides' the Peloponnesian War, which has a very similar style. frustratingly, there are 9 and a half blank pages, and the story isn't finished - (SPOILER ALERT) Athens is sacked - and the book stops! what happens to the ships that have sailed down south? does Xerxes make it across the isthmus? of all the relatively inane things that are included, why include them, and not finish this part of the story, AND leave blank pages? what are you doing with Penguin Epics mr/mrs Penguin? anyway, it was interesting to read Herodotus explain the origins of all the various tribes and nations - where they'd come from, who they moved on, their descent, origin of their name etc. it is bizarre to think of a time when you could emigrate somewhere where there was noone where you were going - hey, this looks like a good place to start a settlement that will still be here in a few thousand years!

but otherwise, onto some serious reading. Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred. should keep me going a little while.

Calvin: why baptism?

i'm getting closer to finishing Calvin's Institutes. in the second-last chapter he has a go at the five sacraments rejected as unbiblical (confirmation, penance, extreme unction, orders and marriage). he doesn't have a problem with the first or last two, just with them being called sacraments in the same way as the lord's supper or baptism are.

in speaking against penance, he writes:

As if baptism were wiped out by sin, and is not rather to be recalled to the memory of the sinner whenever he thinks of forgiveness of sins, so that from it he may gather himself together, take courage, and confirm his faith that he will obtain the forgiveness of sins, which has been promised him in baptism!
IV.xix.17

that is, one of the key reasons for baptism is to recall, when you fall into sin, that you are one of those Christ died to redeem, and to go and sin no more.

the wisdom of wedlock

i tried to follow the same basic outline for all three weeks, so the outline was again

i] what is wedlock?
ii] we need wisdom to guide us through wedlock
iii] Proverbs is not the end of the story - Jesus redeems wedlock

again, it was an opportunity to put together some of the strands from ethics this year.

i] we first thought through the importance of wedlock in the media - both the gossip columns as well as the political sphere. we also recognised that we all have some interest in the topic - most of us are the product of wedlock, and most of us either are, will be, or desire to be married one day.

again, we looked at Gen 1-2 and 3, to see that there is a tarnished goodness in marriage - it is spoilt by sin, but there is still goodness in marriage.

ii] Proverbs is a bit politically incorrect - the context is the father to the son. and you can't just make it all gender non-specific, it doesn't always work. so that, as well as the context where most people are married (most at church aren't) means we need wisdom to apply the wisdom of Proverbs to us in our situations and contexts.

the two extremes are the adulteress and the quarrelsome woman.

• as far as the adulteress is concerned, this is not marriage advice but fooling around/sowing-wild-oats kind of advice. she is alluring
  

  Come, let us take our fill of love till morning;
  let us delight ourselves with love.
  For my husband is not at home;
  he has gone on a long journey;
  he took a bag of money with him;
  he won’t be back for a month.”
  Prov. 7.18-20

  but despite the intoxication of the thought of 'lovemaking till morning', this woman leads us to death.
  
• the other extreme is marrying poorly
  

  a quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping.
  Prov. 9.13b
  
  Better to live on a corner of the roof
  than share a house with a quarrelsome wife.
  Prov. 25.24
  
  Better to live in a desert
  than with a quarrelsome and ill-tempered wife.
  Prov. 21.19

  
  
• the middle point, the third way, is to choose your wife well and enjoy your life with her.
  

  May your fountain be blessed,
  and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.
  A loving doe, a graceful deer—
  may her breasts satisfy you always,
  may you ever be captivated by her love.
  Prov. 5.18-19

  
  
• an even better good tho, than finding a good wife, is finding miss wisdom herself, and marrying her.
  

  Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,”
  and call understanding your relative.
  She will keep you from the forbidden woman,
  from the adulteress with her smooth words.
  Prov. 7.4-5

  that is, finding true wisdom will keep you from following the path of folly to death.
  this places the good of marriage into it's appropriate place, that is, it is a good thing to marry (Prov. 18.22), but this good is secondary to the goodness of seeking wisdom; the folly of marrying the quarrelsome woman is therefore not a good to be pursued.

iii] this then is how Jesus redeems wedlock. such that Paul can write to the Corinthians both of the goodness of marriage, but also great good of not being married. so then marriage is seen differently, as it points people to the love of Christ for the church. but singleness is seen differently also:

1. because we’re part of a community of believers, unmarried people can honour marriage, by being glad for those who are married without bitterness and envy, and caring for those who are married in their own areas of need.
   
2. part of this can be making sure marrieds don’t turn their marriages and families if they have them into an idol. you can do this by reminding them of those beyond their immediate horizon, that God’s Kingdom is to be our horizon, and service of others is to be the way of life for all Christians, whatever our marital status.
   
3. single people can model in a different way what it looks like to be a Christian who is content with the riches we share in Christ. this means being sexually pure, making the most of the gift of singleness. this also means that while you may ask God for the gift of marriage, there is no place for thinking of yourself as a second-class Christian, or for making crass jokes about getting people married. there may be many reasons that people are single, some not by choice, but others are single for well-thought through reasons.

finally, i reflected a bit more on the sadness that singleness can be, because it is good part of God's good creation.
and then there was a call in line with Heb. 13.4, that all are to honour marriage.
and lastly, a reminder to all, to keep focussing on the thing greater than the greatest marriage, the future of all believers, in the closest of relationships with our saviour.

the wisdom of work

doing a series on proverbs at church atm.
the first week was an intro (1-9), 2 weeks ago was wine, last week i was on with work, as well as the next two weeks with wedlock and then words.
i stole the titles from st albans lindfield when we did these a while ago (you may remember me posting thoughts from my intro talk)

i've really found ethics helpful this year, and we spent a bit of time thinking about work, so it was nice to try and put it all together

my basic outline:
i] what is work?
ii] we need wisdom to guide us through work
iii] Proverbs is not the end of the story - Jesus redeems work

i] tried to show that work is part of creation, that even though tarnished by sin and cursed by God, it's not devoid of good. there's usually both good and bad in all work, and what's good one day can be toilsome the next.

ii] talked through three areas where proverbs is particularly vocal:

1. honesty
   

   The balance and scales must be just according to the Lord;
   he concerns himself with the weights of the pouch.
   Prov. 16.11

2. the way you work
   here i talked about the two poles - the sluggard on the one hand
   

   The sluggard buries his hand in the dish;
   it wears him out to bring it back to his mouth.
   Prov. 26.15

   - and the wicked, on the other, who i tried to show were not dissimilar to the workaholic.
   

   10 My son, if sinners entice you,
   do not consent 11 If they say,
   “Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood;
   let us ambush the innocent without reason;"
   [...]
   18 these men lie in wait for their own blood;
   they set an ambush for their own lives.
   19 Such are the ways of everyone who is greedy for unjust gain;
   it takes away the life of its possessors.
   Prov. 1.10-19

   what proverbs advises is therefore contentment, such that we can pray this prayer with Jesus in the Lord's prayer:
   

   Two things I ask of you;
   deny them not to me before I die:
   Falsehood and lies keep far from me;
   give me neither poverty nor riches,
   but give me only my daily bread.
   lest I be full and deny you
   and say, “Who is the LORD?”
   or lest I be poor and steal
   and profane the name of my God.
   Prov. 30.7-9

3. generosity
   

   Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the LORD,
   and he will repay him for his deed.
   Prov. 19.17

iii] Proverbs is not the end of the story - Jesus redeems work.   yet even saying this, we need to recognise the deep fallen-ness of so much work, where people are forced into demeaning jobs, where people are unable to find work, where physical or mental illness or disability deny people the opportunities to work, and others are in pointless, purpose-less jobs. thankfully we can see how even in jobs that seem close to pointless, these areas of work have value

1. Creation
   this is stuff like subduing and having dominion. like mothers changing nappies, people building engineers, weeding
   
2. Community
   keeping society functioning. IT, accountants, all these sort of things which seem quite pointless in any eternal sense are hence given purpose
   
3. Gospel
   

i finished off talking about Luther, his idea of vocation (Beruf), that we are called by God into his service - thus making all of life holy, be it changing nappies, applying for jobs, plucking chickens, taking out the rubbish.

therefore we can understand why Luther, even if Jesus were coming back tomorrow, would still plant an apple tree today.


and that was it.
i wanted to talk about the idea of rest, and how that fits in. but no time.

Eucharist in John 6?

a while ago i summarised Calvin's Short Treatise on the Lord's Supper.

i began thinking about it again in relation to John 6 and what's going on there. in the anglican prayer book service, i thought it said something like 'may the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ keep you in eternal life.'

in John 6.53-58 Jesus says

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

now, it's pretty clear that Jesus is talking about his death, but it's not insignificant that the same terms used to talk about his death are the used to talk about the remembrance meal he instituted.

Calvin says in the aforementioned treatise

The bread and the wine are visible signs which represent the body and blood, but the name and title body and blood are given to them because they are as it were the instruments by which the Lord distributes them to us. (Section 14)

we want to protect people from popery (check out not a couple of the 39 articles!), but what happens at the Lord's table isn't nothing either. Calvin does a great job of charting this line between Luther and Zwingli in this respect.

reading a couple of protestant commentaries on John 6 (Hendricksen and Köstenberg), neither think it's about the institution of the eucharist, but Köstenberg does suggest Calvin might be on to something in that it is derivative - that is, we celebrate what Jesus tells us about sharing in his death by sharing in the meal. indeed, whenever we remember Jesus' death on our behalf is a great opportunity to share in a remembrance meal, celebrating our union with him in his death and resurrection. we are not obliged to do it every time, but by never doing it we miss out on engaging all our senses (hearing, speaking, seeing, feeling, tasting) - a beautifully creaturely way for us creatures to join together to remember Christ's death, instituted by our creator!

being Hauerwas

in between prolonged illness and exegeticals, i've managed to squeeze in a fair bit of Hauerwas. dan, pretty much the closest thing to a Hauerwas specialist, recommended i start with Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir, which i really loved.

i should add - Stanley Hauerwas is an American ethicist, who is strongly influenced by John Howard Yoder who was a Mennonite pacifist.

Hauerwas has worked at a variety of institutions - most notably Arkansas (which i was taught this week is actually said Arkansaw - who would have guessed!), Notre Dame and Duke. he came over to do the New College Lectures back in 1990, and as well as being named by Time magazine America's best theologian, he presented the 2000/2001 Gifford Lectures.

he's a really interesting guy - as mentioned above, Hannah's Child is a great introduction to him. there are also some great anecdotes about him.
an untrue, yet very funny one, is that he visited Harvard, asked 'where the library was at', and upon being told that people at Harvard didn't end sentences with prepositions, rephrased his question, 'where's the library at asshole'.
he denies this ever happened - but not that it is at all against his character (i.e., it could've, but didn't happen).*

my biggest problem with Hauerwas is he's written so voluminously! it's really hard to get through all he's written, particularly with others wanting to borrow the same books from the library! what i like about him is his emphasis on the centrality of the church, and the importance of simple acts such as kneeling and doing communion as signifying what it is to be a set-apart community. although he perhaps overstates the importance of for example doing the eucharist weekly, in the Australian, and particularly Sydney context, we have definitely gone to far in the other direction - there is a fear of making church look like church.

anyway, i'll keep trawling through. will say more when i have more to say.

* in The State of the University, 2007, p133.

Gaudí en la favela

a few years ago i stumbled upon a documentary about a guy in a brazilian favela who had been decorating it in a style uncannily like Gaudí. like all those living in the slums of brazil (he lives in sao paulo), he built his house from things he found, but in his case there was a tree on his 'property'*, which he incorporated into his dwelling, and it has gone from there.
bbc has a good report on their website here

the info for the doco is here, i'm pretty sure i watched it on abc, but it's probably pretty hard to find.

i love the creativity, the organic nature of his art, the unpretentiousness of it all (he trawls through building sites for things to keep adding to it). it reminds me of the refrain in Gen 1, where creation is to be fruitful and multiply - the creation keeps on creating with its God-given createdness. that is, Ezekiel's perfect temple is beautiful, but that perfect architecture gives way in Revelation to the perfect presence of God with us, and the river that feeds the trees that bring life and healing.

i love cities, but my favourite description of metropopli (?) comes from the sociologist Max Weber, who looked down from a sky-scraper and from there saw the city as an ecosystem, everything organically reacting to each other element. it's therefore not surprising to see the mixing of the metaphors of perfect city and garden, rather very fitting!

* i don't think favelas can ever be official even though there are millions living in them, they're 'domus non grata' (i don't actually speak latin, but that's my best guess!)