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You don't go to Lubbock, Texas, to be confused. You don't see much of The Mystery reflected in Lubbock - the way you do here, amid the chaos of Albuquerque. That's not bad. But it's not all good, either.

I visited Lubbock late last week on some family business. For me, it was an adventure in urban cognitive consonance - when the buildings, landscapes, street grid and such correspond with, and reinforce, what people are thinking. It's the opposite of cognitive dissonance - when a booster, for example, says Albuquerque is a welcoming place, but you notice all the pit bulls and streets lined with cinder-block walls.

Many folks regard Lubbock as an upstanding, God-fearing city. Indeed. It looks like the Sultanate of the Straightforward, the Fatherland of the Foursquare.

I like Lubbock. It sits in the middle of the Texas Panhandle, one of the flattest places on Earth. Everything is so elemental. Ground. Sky. That's about it. The flatness, ironically, limits what you can see to the curvature of the planet - not much. It draws your attention to whatever is starkly at hand, so long as it's standing up. No tall crops to block the views. No place to hide from God or pastor. You can speed along but not notice you're getting anywhere, because the basic picture rarely changes. There's no illusion of escape.

Lubbock itself is the picture of solidity. The vast majority of its buildings are made of brick, pretty much all in the same, stable way. The city is squarely laid out and easy to negotiate. Streets ascend in numerical and alphabetical order. You rarely feel lost.

If you do get lost, physically or spiritually, there's a church on just about every corner, where you can address your afflictions. God is prominent. You see entire families eating together at restaurants. Often, they'll talk about church. I saw a woman in an IHOP hand a drawing of Jesus to an admiring cashier. TV stations bleep out cuss words. It's a rare dry city. Liquor is sold only in bars and restaurants. Country music plays on most radio stations.

While listening to a country tune about a man cheating on a good woman, I was struck by Lubbock's broad acceptance of life. It even makes room for sin. Yes, people mess up. But they know what to do to make things right. The answer is etched in the square blocks that lead straight to church and its sermons on redemption.

Whoever designed Lubbock this way, wittingly or not, did people a great service. Life is chaotic and bewildering. It can seem weird that we're here at all, in this way, at this time, much as Talking Heads' David Byrne notes in his song, "Once in a Lifetime." What do we do with this life? People in Lubbock have an owner's manual writ large, imprinted on its urban form.

Whoever did this surely meant well, as did, for example, the elders in M. Night Shyamalan's movie, "The Village," when they created their utopian respite from the ugliness of life.

The trouble is, the chaos that people struggle to control in "The Village" - and in Lubbock - is real. It can't be confined in any single structure. It must, somehow, be embraced - not just overcome - if we are to enter fully into The Mystery. Better, I think, to keep chaos a bit closer, as we do here in our profoundly imperfect city.