THE CITY
best and least conflict-ridden of all secular American holidays, Thanksgiving, is a moment in which all our private and idiosyncratic markers receive a rare kind of public visibility and endorsement. But the landmarks of cities do something different and something unique, for they serve to unite the experience of all of us. They lift us out of our idiosyncracy and individuality into a world of common experience. They are a visible token of how individual experience is woven into the larger fabric of reality itself, and as such, are not implausibly seen as an anticipation of the Kingdom of Heaven. As Burke implies, preservation is a necessary component of anticipation. The party of memory is also the party of hope—understanding what Christ meant in promising to make all things new. This is not newness in obliteration of the past, but newness of redemption and resurrection in which nothing of value is ever lost. Consider: when do we feel most keenly aware of the world to come? Is it not when we contemplate the deaths of those who have left us, and begin to reflect on the meaning of “the communion of saints,� that state of unity that brings together all that is worthy and beautiful at the end of time? Preserving the memory of what we have lost turns out to be an essential prod to our anticipation of what is come. And both preservation and anticipation are at odds with the other way of understanding the city, as raw material in the hands of wellmeaning but arrogant planners and technocrats who would wipe away every mistake of the past, and use their ingenuity to comprehensively refashion every feature of our collective lives into something new and better. Against this impulse, we should be on our guard. I am not counseling complacency. On the contrary, I am suggesting that we remember that there is a significant difference between improving our world incrementally and setting out to perfect it. And that in undertaking improvements, we need to remember not only that we can change the world, but that there is much to be grateful for in what we have already. To fail to see that, to fail in gratitude, is also a failure of stewardship. To leave you with a better sense of exactly what I mean, let me ask your indulgence, and quote one last time from Lewis Mumford, once 18