We are a community that is growing, shifting, and changing. We are – praise the Lord! - becoming more diverse; and I pray the Lord continues to make us more so.
While this growth in diversity is absolutely biblical and right and good; it is also fragile and unstable if we are not thinking and aware, prayerful and purposeful.
So as we start to dialogue about and among ourselves, it is important that we wrap our minds and affections in humility and openness to listen and learn. It’s not always easy. In fact, it gets down-right ugly when you move past polite and into the very real pain, fear, rejection, confusion, and bitterness that people experience related to race, class, gender, etc.
We have a lot to talk about related to failed ideas like colorblindness and melting pots. We have a lot to learn about being led by love into friendships that actually transform. Friendships and love which cause internal dislocations and painful realizations about the conditions people endure. Conditions that we can unfortunately help to perpetuate and justify against people we dearly love and respect.
It’s not a matter of what we want to be true. Rather it is the reality of a larger context(s), of culture(s) and conditions and situations in which we act and think (and which shape us, our actions, and thoughts).
To start out the conversation – and to put us in the frame of heart to listen – I want to introduce you to a poem that I want you to listen to. It is a brilliant piece of work that has to be heard to be believed. I will avoid giving you all the details of history, structure, background, etc. Rather I want you to listen. It is a specific style of poetry that has two narrators who speak their parts through, then they speak together. You have two stories that become one. This story; “Ledbelly vs. Lomas at the Modern Languages Association Conference, 1934″ by Tyehimba Jess; will – I pray – do more to open our understanding of what it means to have different experiences in the same context which reveal that we don’t have the same context at all.
You can listen in at the following link:
If the link doesn’t work go to fishousepoems.org, look up Tyehimba Jess under the poets, and arrow down and click on ”leadbelly vs lomas at the modern languages association conference 1934″
Let me know what you think.
