Dear saints,



It's easy, isn't it, to miss what's right in front of your eyes when you see it every day.

On the Saturday before Palm Sunday, when the future of our block committee met with the vestry, we went on a walk around the West Peachtree side of our block. We gathered here and there, stopped and talked about what we saw, and then we congregated right at the point where I often watched people slow down and pause as they walk past my West Peachtree facing office window, on the sidewalk in front of the magnolia tree. When I've watched strangers pass by, I've sometimes imagined their blood pressure lowering as their footsteps slow, almost as if their bodies realize before their minds do that in all of the rushing about of their daily living, this is a place to linger. Many take photographs, and I also often see people's line of sight move from the magnolia tree up to the church. One seems to lead them to the other. Beauty upon beauty, as the realization dawns that this is a different order of place. 

As I recalled all of that, standing myself on West Peachtree, I saw the angle I could not have seen from my office window: from the sidewalk into the green urban oasis of our courtyard. You have to move around Midtown on foot (or by bike if you care to join me) to get a real sense of the contrast our block is in the heart of this city. We are now situated along a corridor of towering buildings. West Peachtree and Spring Street are not the same as they were even the eight, short years since my family and I first moved to Atlanta. In many ways it is a story of incredible regeneration and the fact that Midtown remains the most expensive office submarket in metro-Atlanta is testament to the fact that this place is one where people want to come to work, live and enjoy life together. The other side of that coin, however, is the fact that there are few places where a person can find some respite from the city, built upward as it is, until of course they happen upon 634 West Peachtree Street. 

Urban planners and architects talk about placemaking. It's the idea that there are places where people can thrive because they encounter one another in spaces that welcome them in and draw out of them the goodness and buoyancy that makes being around other humans fun, poignant, and nourishing for the soul. Our city block has been a placemaker space for the past 122 years. In fact, the vision of the Peters family, who donated the land for All Saints' to exist on our block, was of 'Peters Park' a place where people would make home together on a verdant edge of Atlanta. That edge, now at the center of the city, is where our souls and the souls of all who come here get to breathe deeply. The natural world green and growing, the space, the light, and the craggy tendrils of that old beauty, our magnolia, are the opening God's creation gives us to continue to be a placemaking block in the life of this city.

That we might retain and enhance that oasis that lies at the heart of our campus has been the most consistent and repeated refrain of this whole discernment process for the future of our block. We want to be a different order of place. Beauty matters in the life of a healthy society, as indeed I believe it does in the life of a healthy church.

Of course, we don't need to wait for a master plan to make use of our place in that way. Let's make sure we find ourselves again soon under the lights of evening in our courtyard as we did for the Hallelujah Anyhow refugee ministries celebration. Perhaps you can imagine a concert, or a yoga class, or some outdoor tables and chairs to enjoy food and fellowship, or something else that the Holy Spirit has on her mind for you and I and this city. Should the Spirit spark a thought, don't keep it to yourself - let us know so we can continue to seed new life here.

To be a placemaker is both a privilege and a responsibility. Sacred places are in so many ways an oxygen supply for a carbonized world. We will hold fast to the promise of this place as a space for such life-affirming meaning-making and community. And perhaps I will see you on the upper branches of our tree, searching for God in the lap of creation.

Happy Easter, and see you on May 4th as we share our vision for this holy and wondrous place.