beyond poetry
Ok, just a disclaimer. This is going to be another one of my
I-just-got-back-from-an-english-lecture-and-now-I'm-all-excited kind of blogs. You've been warned.
I am currently reading
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. TFA (as I will henceforth refer to the book because I am too bloody lazy to keep typing the whole title) is a novel about the Igbo people set in Nigeria and published in 1958, at the imposition of colonial rule. Ok so, since I haven't exactly
finished the book (don't hate me Mack, it will be finished by seminar- I swear) I am not going to write about the plot of TFA. I am going to write about something a lot scarier than fiction: me.
Today in lecture we talked about how we always base our conceptions of foreign things and foreign places on what
we already know. On something
we can relate to. Now Hugh Hodges started off the lecture by talking about bananas. He showed us a photo of bunches of bananas and talked about how we always display them with the stem up (because that's the way things are supposed to grow, right?) even though they actually grow the other way round. He said that this is a good metaphor for the way north americans and europeans like to view Africa, by putting it into boxes of things that we understand.
Now I have to say that until very recently, I have never devoted very much grey-matter to thinking about Africa. Africa was only poetry to me. Something strange and foreign beyond the horizion of my imagination. Some place hot with flat trees and women dancing in brightly coloured cloth. Africa was something I did not understand; something I still do not understand. Now I don't want to be racist or ethnocentric here (gotta love university for teaching us big fancy words like that, eh?) but my question is: how can I not? I know that we humans are all the same no matter how wide our noses are or what we eat for lunch; but this kind of knowing is all
savoir and no
connaitre. I want to understand Africa, I really do. But I want to understand it in a way that does not strip it of its dignity, reducing it to some romanticized fantasy-land where I can indulge my own ignorance. I desperately want to do this, but I do not know how.
Suggestions?
Winter
Just because summer has
made her escape
and your dead trees pine for the sun
what is that to me?
I am not afraid.Just because winter has
frozen your blood
at the height of unspeakable storms
what is that to me?
I do not hide from the wind.Just because you pack your
fists full of ice
till the heat of your love-rage burns cold
what is that to me?
I will not call you a man.
why cowboys aren't the point
"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."-JesusJohn 13: 34-35Love one another, eh?
Sometimes I find it amusing (in a cynical kind of way) how we Christians always get so caught up in the picky little details of our faith while missing the basic things, the big things, things like love. We (and, as is the case in most of my blogs- "we" refers to "me") are so busy debating evangelism strategies and whether or not dancing and dating are immoral that sometimes I think, we kind of miss the point.
Love one another.Love one another.Love.One Another.Hmm...maybe there no lone rangers in Christianity. Maybe God is not impressed by all of our cowboy hats and attempts to be Chuck Norris. Maybe we all need to turn off those romantic westerns and get off our prideful horses for a change. Maybe one more seminar won't be the key to introducing our friends to Jesus; maybe it will be love.
I hate to admit this, but I need people. I need my sisters and brothers in Christ to walk beside me because, damn it- I'm not strong enough to do this alone.
Don't get me wrong, I love a good western as much as the next person, but let's ride into the sunset together, my friends.
Then they will know that we are his disciples.
subtlety
This is violent in its subtlety
these whispered words
these westward waves
that break upon the shore
This is deafening in its silence
this jagged stone
this desperate love
of mountain and of sea
This is perfect in its paradox
seamless. airless. nameless. breathless.
any less
and wind might wash it away
Samurai
His words are all in present tense
in self-defense
pulled black and tight and whisper-dense
against a vast sarcastic sky.
This Samurai who never weeps
though battle wounds run fresh and deep
just asks to bleed
and so impede
the flow of dawn, the red good-bye.
the blackest "ism"
Racism.
Just as offensive as all the other "isms" and yet, somehow darker- full of dried blood and dirty secrets, clothed in
blackest velvet. The word itself is kind of satisfying, though; beginning with an "r" and all (r is such a gutsy letter). The "m" is a nice finale, mmmmm for silent (dis)agreement. And let's not forget the "c", burried in the middle, hiding her face in vowels. Racccccce- was that a serpant's hiss?
I guess we don't really like to talk abot racism in our "Hi-I'm-Canada-and-I'm-a-cultural-mosaic" society- but maybe we should. Maybe we should talk about it instead of trying to serve McCurry and pretending that we have no sense of "us" and "them".
I hate racism. I think we all hate it, and I think what we hate most about it is that this hungry monster resides in each of our chests. This beast who wants us to put people in boxes so that we can pretend we actually understand this world. So that we can pretend we are God, or (at the very least), that God agrees with
us, agrees
with
our people
.Today in sociology we watched a video where they interviewed this guy from "The Church of the Creator" (a white-supremacy organization). The video said that this group even has propaganda websites geared toward children. As a Christian, this made me very angry. I do not think God enjoys being a justification for our ignorance.
But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believes in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.- JesusMatthew 18:6
Midnight Walks Alone
Disembodied
thoughts of you
vaguelike the ocean but
deeper blue
-echo
through the aching sands
the throbbing shore
the desperate beach
begging
pleading
needing
-more-but Midnight walks alone
