Has anyone else noticed Zombies taking over our major American cities?  Hordes of undead parading around downtown (and then taking off the makeup and meeting at the local pub) ?

This kind of thing has been happening in Detroit lately.  Sometimes it isn't zombies.  Sometimes it's the party marching band, or the old-timey velocipede club.  But each episode is a little push against, and playfulness with, the brokenness of our city.

If Detroit was the birthplace of the assembly line, where everything works to mass effect and all that is produced shines with similar success - then these are the anti-assembly line products.  These are folks who live and work in the City that Once Was.  Or, these are people who never left and need to see life happen again.  These are people who look at the hole in the wall of the abandoned building and envision a new organic food, peddle-up drive through.

I'm thankful for that kind of clunky, creative, experimental spirit on the part of my fellow Detroiters.  They seem to say that with a faith in the kind of grace that God offers, even a crumbling place can be a garden.  They remind me that living in and among the brokenness can lead us to new life. So glad to be reminded, in Dee Dee Risher's opening article in this edition of Consp!re of the woman from 2 Kings.  That this brokenness may not be what we asked for, but it may just be the moment through which God pulls us into new and greater things.

Carl