(Heart)-ing the inner city

I was asked to write 500 words on this Urban Expression value:

We challenge the trend of some Christians moving out of the cities and encourage Christians to relocate to the inner cities.

This is what I wrote. (Plus a little bit from a previous post which I won’t repeat here.)

“I love the inner city like a changeable lover: one day enthralled, besotted and adoring the next day moody and unresponsive. I’m heady with the sound of Bangla music floating on the air; my stomach rumbles with the wafts of cooking curry coming through the window; my eyes gorge on the colours of the city, the shower of fairy lights from a high-up window, long dresses and salwar kameezes sweeping grey concrete pavements. Days when I feel like I know what I am doing here, days when I feel like I am being ‘useful’, days when I feel increasingly entwined in people’s lives in positive and community-creating ways.

Days that as I walk around, I realize I’m in love and everything is as it should be.

Then there’s the other side, when I only see the flaws in my beloved: the hum of the Highway that keeps me awake and restless on warm summer evenings, rubbish and litter punctuate my walk home, days when sirens, screaming and never-ending noise is the soundtrack. Days when I really don’t know what I’m doing here, days when its clear that no matter what I do, I can’t change some situations, days when I want some room, some space, some privacy.

Days like that when I want to run and hide, go somewhere clean, safe, gentle.

But I can’t leave this place that I love and struggle with. I have seen too many moments of beauty and shocking love to walk away. Sometimes I fantasize about other ‘safe’ places that I have lived in but I visit them again, and I shudder. I can’t go back there. I would miss the vitality, the rawness and the mystery of life in the city. So for now I fall out and in love with the city… loving her beauty, painting over her grey dullness.