Thursday, January 21, 2010

Random Rants

I'm not really sure if I ever got around to one central point....but that's what rants are for anyway. Just some thoughts on humanity:

The human race is incredibly fascinating. Fascinating and hilarious, I might say. Being a part of the race, I can’t say I’m not susceptible to its calamities, its chaos. However, if one steps back and looks at how easily we tattoo the history of our race on our skin they might find that the pigment is so distorted we can’t tell which way is backwards and which is our front. Humans remember in a way that is unlike the rest of earth’s inhabitants. We remember the mistakes of the past and take them on as our own burlap load over this rail-tie crossing journey we call life. My sins are the sins of my mother, of her mother, of hers and so on…


This isn’t to say that we should forget the past at all. That’s how things like the Holocaust repeat themselves. No, we shouldn’t forget what we’ve learned over the course of our existence, but have we paid so much attention to what our father’s father’s father’s father did that we spend each day making it our duty to make up for it. What the human race fails to see is that we cannot recall the entire history of our ancestors’ sins on our bones or they’ll break. We must own our own sins and right them before anything else.

What am I getting at? Let me find my point here.

If we continue to try and make up for things that are gone and done with, how will we move forward? We constantly live in the past and with our necks craned so far behind us, we’re liable to stumble over our next big problem. Honorable as it may be to try and make up for our blunders, we over exacerbate them by bringing them up day after day.

Here’s what I propose:

Make a mistake (for it’s good to make mistakes every now and again) and learn from it. Apologize, repent, whatever you have to do, and then move on. Move on. In Isaiah 43:18 God says, “’Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.’” He goes on to say that He is making new things and making, “’a way in the desert; and streams in the wasteland.’” God makes all things new again and forgives those who repent. We should remember our sin, learn from our sin, but should not dwell on it. The whole point of having a savior is having sins removed. Our transgressions are gone and forgotten by God, so why do we insist on remembering them.

I’m afraid, I haven’t quite reached what I intended to say initially. We as humans, as people have difficulties accepting the fact that we’re no longer guilty in God’s eyes. That’s not to say that we don’t sin, but that we’re forgiven for what we do. When God wipes the slate clean, it’s so hard to wipe it clean in our minds.

There are terrible things that our own nature can lead to when left unchecked, but they are also things that I think we inherently know are wrong. However, we can’t seem to forget the years of slavery that was put on the African Americans in the U.S. or that Blacks were discriminated against for years after was slavery was gone. I’m not saying these things should be forgotten, just put to rest. We can’t atone for something forever. I’m also not saying that God forgives all of America for that blotch of iniquity, because I don’t know the mind of God and can’t speak for him. All I’m trying to say is that we as a people need to put to rest all of our reservations. I can’t look at every person on the street with a different race than mine and think, Oh, well, I better be nice to them because of all that stuff that happened in the past.

That’s not getting rid of the problem. The only way to be rid of racism is to look at each individual person as a person with thoughts and ideals. We as Christians are taught to love all people. Jesus says to his disciples in Mathew 25:45 “’I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’” We are called to not just be evangelicals or to “save” the masses, but to love all people and serve them through our service to God. Service comes from love and therefore if we love God, we serve him. If we love people, we serve them. How do we love people? Look at them as individuals and stop remembering the history of the world when we see the color of someone’s skin.

The way we remember also gives me another point—we hold grudges. We can’t let go of, not only our own transgressions, but the sins that others have committed against us. Forgiveness is a mouthful for humans—for Americans especially. We’re taught from an early age that this world is eye for an eye and that no wrong should go unpunished.

Unpunish it.

That’s another dare I have for you. The next time someone says something or does something to you, love them and let it go unpunished. We’re not the judges of the world. We as Christians are not God’s mouth and we cannot speak for him. It is not my job or anyone else’s to condemn those who do wrong. That’s God’s job. Our job is to love people. Our job is to stop hurting people with the way we remember their debts to us and the way we live around them. Our job is to be the servants of people regardless of what they do to us. That’s how Christ came into the world and that’s how He taught us to be throughout His teachings. We must come with a childlike eagerness to the Lord and we must stop looking inwardly to how we’ve been hurt. Look into the eyes of that one co-worker you can’t stand, look into the lines of the face of that kid that insists on insulting you and tell me that Jesus doesn’t love them too. Remember that they are one of God’s creations as much as you are and remember that God forgave you for the wrongs you did. Tell me that there’s one reason that we shouldn’t forgive and love them.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Vacant

By the back lot of Spalding’s bakery on West 6th
I reached my fingers around the rusted gate
of used-to-be farmland dropped out-of-the-sky
sideways into inner-city and curled my hand
around a pale blue blossom, took the petals
between the printed pads of index and thumb.

You drew plans for empty spaces on your notepad.

I kicked the broken bottles at my feet,
asked you to hold my notebook but,
stuck my pen through the thick
of my ponytail and clambered
over the red gate, dropped
into a patch of could-be-poison-oak.

I wrote the names of fauna on my hands,
pressed my palms to the bricks of the bakery,
touched my cheek to the panes of the windows,
scribbled the taste of the dust on my forearm.

You pressed yourself against the metal until
the flakes of red-40 paint stuck to the white lettering
of your t-shirt, while I turned over rock and abandoned
lawn chair, counting daddy-long-legs and the circles
of a spider’s web, drawing further away.

I told you writing was about discovering empty.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Mourn

This is the silence I must tell, when lips blessed
the taste of goodbye, the taste of salted
holy water comig from eyes, when faces
were thankful for night to hide tomorrow
while it clung to the pressed corners of their mouths.

I found myself reciting back all the moon hymns
that I could remember, looking through the glow
of your cell phone, catching you with streak-lines
and the skin of your brow crumpled down
to the bridge of your nose.

I followed the blood-rush with my fingers,
up from the tops of your ears
to the bottom of your cheekbone,
seeping into the whites of your eyes,
stinging the coffee brown around the black
while reflected streams of light suck
to the edges like fast drying ink.

I told you the silence as you pressed
your ear to the bottom of my collarbone,
so you could feel the poetry under my skin,
crawling up the strings of my spine,

so you wouldn't feel so much
like we were burning.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

A New Year, A New Together

He dipped his middle finger into the holy water and touched it to his face as we left St. Paul's Cathedral on New Year's Eve. I smiled to Father Charles and passed the baptismal without a second glance. The water was still and shining in the marble bowl, but when his fingers breeched the surface it rippled and swirled like any other liquid.

Must you be so holy? Must you, to be able to touch the water and make it seem so ordinary again? I was sure he was holy enough, good enough, but not me.

We laced our hands together and blessed water wet the spaces between my fingers and his. We climbed down from God's great house and I admired the structure from the sidewalk. Our breath made ghosts around us but neither of us said anything. The wind whipped through the space between our bodies, sending shivers up my bare legs.

I let the silence sink in for a moment as I pondered deep in my heart. Mary's motherhood, Joseph's disconnection with his only love, his helplessness. While Mary shined in God's hands, Joseph passed by, admired her with reverence--and shame.

Was it shame? What was in Joseph's heart as he looked at Mary? Did he see how pure she was? Did he see how she smiled and moved and how blessed she was? Did his heart sink like a rock in his chest when he realized that she was good?

What did Mary see in Joseph when she looked back?

We walked the next three blocks to the car. My shoes made the only sound between us, counting my steps against the cobblestones. I counted with them and wondered at his warmth next to me, avoided his gaze.

But, Joseph loved Mary. Of that, I was sure.

He opened the passenger door for me, smiled and his eyes were thankful. For what, I can't be certain, but I knew he saw my shame, my questions, and he told me I was wonderful.

Wonderfully disconnected.