This is a photo from the recent New York City trip Sarah and I took with some friends. It's of Bryant Park in Manhattan.
The reason I'm blogging on it is because to me, it represents an image of the potentially beautiful and symbiotic relationship mankind could have with nature. Sure, there's still a hustle and bustle here, an industry, with people going to and from work, passing through the trees. But there's also an extreme sense of peace, as some people are just enjoying the green space, relaxing under the branches, letting the breezes pass over them. There's even a Reading Room, a café-like setting with tables and chairs and bookshelves, where you can check out a book for the amount of time you're going to sit there and read.
The scene of Bryant Park is startling as you round the corner from walking down street after street of tall building after tall building. All of a sudden you see tall trees instead, gently swaying, people and animals running on grass, a large fountain with its soothing tones of mildly splashing water. We who had been walking for a while were drawn to it instantly, like a moth to the flame, and a grand sense of delight overcame me as we ascended the stone steps and entered in.
There are several well-done parks like this in New York, Central Park of course being the mother of them all. And I'm extremely glad the city planners allowed for such a wonderful break from all the 'brick and mortar.' On the other hand, though, seeing it also caused a small sadness in me, like that of someone seeing some little object at home that instantly fills them with the memory of a lost loved one.
The sadness was simply from realizing how truly little green like this there is in the city compared to how very much stone there is. There's a greatness to the city, to the achievement of man, but there's a far greater beauty in the creation God has made. I often think about the way things were 'supposed to be' had we not wandered so far away from our Creator. How wonderful the garden of Eden must have been! What would have Adam and Eve and their huge family have done, have built, had they not been cast out? Would cities have been raised anyway, with God smiling on and blessing our endeavors? Would they have been different than the cities we see around the world now? I don't know. It is certainly evident that God had put in us the desire to build, to make, to 'sub-create' as Tolkien puts it. But what would our creations have been like had we not broken our relationship with Him?
I'll blog more on cities soon, as I'm becoming increasingly interested in them...
