Layered, exurban landscape: vacant lot, cornfield, warehouses, sky.
Little suburb on the prairie 
March 1, 2012 by
I’m often surprised by how pretty it can be around here. Suburbs? Pretty? Those two words usually don’t go together. When the search committee at the church asked what it would be like for a city girl like me to move to the suburbs – especially way out here in the hinterlands – I could […]
Home is the most important place 
February 11, 2012 by
Bolingbrook is a community of stores and homes. There’s no town center, no special landmarks, and no remarkable geography. (Although, to be fair, there are a few small, muddy rivers and some cornfields). For most of us, the landscape of life is what’s inside our houses and inside the stores nearby. “Home is the most important […]
Medical office building 
February 7, 2012 by
“Our church looks like a medical office building,” one of my church folks has said to me, a few times. Here are two views: What do you think? Does it look more like a place for an orthopedist than for a Eucharist? I’m inspired by churches like Rockefeller Chapel. Modern suburban architecture isn’t known for […]
“You are this place.”
February 3, 2012 by
“You do not really want to ask a Cajun why he lives in a swamp, especially when he is packing everything he owns because the very swamp he loves is about to swallow up his house. …So, why live in a swamp that everyone knew was likely to flood one day? As Mr. Melancon crated […]
I was a city snob
August 14, 2011 by
When I was growing up in Chicago, I was a snob about the suburbs. A suburb was a place without a soul. A place whose soul, land, and history had been carpeted over with asphalt, sod, and malls. Many of my urban friends still believe this about the suburbs and would never live in one. […]
