Poetry Corner: Constance

Last night, Melissa and I found ourselves watching hip hop videos on YouTube and I showed her this one. I wanted to put it out here, because hip hop is close to my heart and is the reason I got into poetry in the first place. This song is intense and quite sad, but the heart behind it is so good. Mr J Medeiros shows what hip hop ought to be and that's an art form that expresses truth in a way that is bigger than the form itself. More of this meaningful music is what I would love to see and certainly what I dream for for hip hop. 

Survival

Last week I found myself doing something quite odd, something that I would take no pride in nor aspire to do. I watched an episode of  American Idol. My mom is a fan of the show and Melissa’s interest was peaked so as the Magic were making a big comeback against the Heat on another channel, I was sitting in the TV room watching twenty-four people trying to become one of thirteen people that would advance to the next round. Its an interesting situation to be sure. American Idol has apparently been the number one show on TV for several years now (not that I helped it become as such) and there have been myriad other shows (Survivor, Last Comic Standing, The Apprentice, etc.) that have this survival mentality that I find quite fascinating.


As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been reading Searching For God Knows What by Donald Miller. It is an interesting social commentary and in it he introduces an analysis called the lifeboat theory. In a nutshell, it says that people want to rank themselves in an order of whose the greatest. If a group of random people were in a lifeboat and somebody needed to be thrown off to save the rest, who would it be? This predicates the power play of survival. How that plays out in society is that we are constantly striving to be seen as important so as to receive the much needed security that comes from living in the lifeboat. For the society at large, I think the analysis is spot on. 


When you look around popular culture in the United States, its quite clear that in every realm of society this hierarchy is formed. Donald Trump is important because he’s got a lot of money. Tyra Banks is safe in the lifeboat because she‘s beautiful. Natalie Portman‘s important because she won an Oscar. Lebron James is safe in the lifeboat because he plays basketball well (not as good as Kobe though). Jerry Brown is important because he’s a powerful politician. You get the idea. 


And while such people sometimes set the culture’s pace, this isn’t just about those famous people out there. You find this mentality anywhere you find a group of people. Think about the popularity contest that is junior high and high school. Beyond that you can see the power play in full effect amongst college coeds that are vying for position as the real world approaches. The same mentality translates to the office, the business and yes, even the church. Its not hard to see where a guy like Charles Darwin would come up with a theory like survival of the fittest, when we’ve been playing this odd ranking game for so long. Its active in ways in the animal kingdom and when we choose to not allow God to define our identity and worth, it happens in our lives as well.

Don Miller Quote

"If we are preaching morality without Christ, and using war rhetoric to communicate a battle mentality, we are fighting on Satan's side. This battle we are in is a battle against the principalities of darkness, not against people who are different from us. In war you shoot the enemy, not the hostage."

-Donald Miller

Searching For God Knows What

Image via Wikipedia

Complicated

Sometimes my desire to write exceeds my ability to do so. I, perhaps, find myself in such a position right now. I’ve ingrained it into my psyche that I need to write on a regular basis for some odd reason; be it a false illusion that what I write matters or a need to organize my thoughts into something meaningful. And yet at this particular moment, I find myself bound and debilitated by the complexity of life. 


My mother has always said that I’m a very black and white person, my fiancé agrees. I often wish that things in life were clearly marked and that dashed lines were drawn everywhere we go, showing us what is good and what is bad. The gray areas are by definition hard to discern and I really hate that. I feel like when Thing A happens then the natural progression should result in Thing B occurring. And if Black is Black and Black is bad, then I shouldn’t do Black ever. Unfortunately for simpletons like me, some things are dark gray which means sometimes they’re okay even if they normally aren’t. Its all quite confusing to be sure and a Christ follower ought to realize that a godly spirit of discernment is much needed at all times. 


I’ve been seeing just how complicated life can be more and more recently. For example, this morning I was reading in the book Searching For God Knows What and Donald Miller was talking about the circus and his love for elephants. In a brief side note, he questioned why we keep elephants in circus cages. In my mind, even such an off-hand comment sends me into this inner dialogue where I argue with myself, “Yeah! Let those elephants out! They weren’t created in cages, so don’t keep them there.” “But we have dominion over them and we ought to be able to do with them as we please. And its not like we’re torturing them, people ought be allowed to enjoy them.” “Asian elephants belong in Asian jungles and African elephants belong in African savannahs. If people want to see them they can go on a safari in their natural habitat.” “Oh, but that would be an awful waste to spend all that money on airfare and the like just for the sake of tourism.” And so on and so on.