Osler's Razor

My dad taught me some important things, many (most, even) of them when he was not talking to me. For example, I remember him once railing at another artist who was doing most of his work out of a safe, nondescript suburban office park: "There's nothing there to challenge you! There's just driveways!"

He was right, I think-- cities (and in a different way, the wild) challenge us to be better. My own best ideas and writing comes from those times that I hole up in New York, for example. Cities mash us together, and we are all different; challenge is inherent in the process. I remember Eudora Welty once saying of New York something to the effect of "Everything there is difficult, but there are the brilliant moments."

So, is it a surprise that for that chaotic last week Jesus goes to the city? It fits, doesn't it-- the tumult, the crowds, the violence in the Temple, the crowds always present. That is the only place that so much could have happened, so fast and so true.