Navigation involves creating personal patterns of movement and association in and through the city.

Discovery is the way we learn to “read the city.”

Transformation is the way we draw upon our spiritual traditions to turn our cities into places of creativity, equity, and authentic community.

Building a spiritual vocabulary out of our experience of life in the city is an activity that requires both an immersion into urban life and a lively imagination. 

In our lives we are likely to undergo multiple experiences of initiation. These processes are part of our urban as well as our spiritual formation.

When we are initiated into the life of a city we begin a life-long process of urban formation.

This article is the first in a series of reflections on the role of public spaces as places of meeting and civic identity.

These "Ten Commandments for Leaders" are adapted from a presentation given to participants in a retreat for younger Portland civic leaders several years ago at Skamania Lodge in the Columbia Gorge.

These leadership lessons for social entrepreneurs are based upon remarks I gave on December 21, 2016 at Grace Memorial Episcopal Church in Portland, Oregon.

If saints are best understood as those who help us to see the world with a depth of meaning and conviction, surely the artist Corita Kent—still remembered by many as Sister Corita—belongs among the company of the saints.

That’s what happened as I entered a room filled with images created over 80 years ago by muralist and painter Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975).

It may seem an odd way to begin this new series of reflections and annotations on the journey of faith and the life of cities, but let me start where I ended the last chapter of my life.