Monday, November 29, 2004
live fast, breathe slow
holler
i havent updated this piece in a minute. its been thanksgiving weekend. I am grateful for the time i had with my new family here in 'Dena and LA. Thanksgiving dinner was really nice, a beautiful day with some people that i have really come to see as family. Then another highlight was ±Reza;s birthday party-- the karaoke was in full effect.....it is a healing and soothing thing to just sing with no shame into an amped mic in front of a lot of friends. i was pretty proud of my self for the cooking i did. It was raining all that day, and i drove to the HK market in Glendale to get the ingredients for Duk Bok Ki-- a Korean dish i learned how to make this summer. i came home, and got to cooking......the kitchen turns into chaos. i really am not good at thinking ahead when i cook, interms of measurement, preparation, etc. so while the ground beef is rapidly getting dark, i was scrambling to chop and mash the garlic (which i did not even have the tools for, so i had to use the butt fo a butter knife and my hand) ayway, i cooked up a fat ass batch of it, and took it over to Reza's, and i was happy. another fun thing about that night was bringing some of the youthseses from our neighborhood over.....we started an all out wrestling match, in which i was picked up, all 160 lbs of me, by a 14 year old. i also got scissor locked by one of them, and almost got suffocated. i have a lot to learn
after more karaoke, Reza's brother got us into a trance club in Los Feliz for free. that was a new experience, but also very freeing. we all felt like we could just let it loose on the dance floor, more that you can at a hip hop club. it was breezy
overall, it was a cool night, a lot of fun.
the weekend was good for me. i needed a break from my jobs. i needed solitude and fun with peers. i needed time at home with my roommate. and to go to PCOG, and to talk to my brother before he leaves, and to spend a day in Borders. i needed to get words from God about some things i my life. last night i stopped the car on an overlook point just past the Rose Bowl, looking over the valley and mountains north of pasadena. I poured it all out to God, and for the first time in a long time, i felt like I heard from him, and i was comforted.
recently, i have been looking for jobs again. i have applied for a few education jobs in pasadena. really, i am looking for anything full time, becasue my current jobs will end with the school year in June
When i was in Borders, i came up on some interesting books. one was called "Blue Dreams" and it was about Korean-American/African American relations before during and after the LA riots of 92. I also got a chance to look at some grafitti mags, which always takes me back, and wish i had continued with that form of artistic expression.
i havent updated this piece in a minute. its been thanksgiving weekend. I am grateful for the time i had with my new family here in 'Dena and LA. Thanksgiving dinner was really nice, a beautiful day with some people that i have really come to see as family. Then another highlight was ±Reza;s birthday party-- the karaoke was in full effect.....it is a healing and soothing thing to just sing with no shame into an amped mic in front of a lot of friends. i was pretty proud of my self for the cooking i did. It was raining all that day, and i drove to the HK market in Glendale to get the ingredients for Duk Bok Ki-- a Korean dish i learned how to make this summer. i came home, and got to cooking......the kitchen turns into chaos. i really am not good at thinking ahead when i cook, interms of measurement, preparation, etc. so while the ground beef is rapidly getting dark, i was scrambling to chop and mash the garlic (which i did not even have the tools for, so i had to use the butt fo a butter knife and my hand) ayway, i cooked up a fat ass batch of it, and took it over to Reza's, and i was happy. another fun thing about that night was bringing some of the youthseses from our neighborhood over.....we started an all out wrestling match, in which i was picked up, all 160 lbs of me, by a 14 year old. i also got scissor locked by one of them, and almost got suffocated. i have a lot to learn
after more karaoke, Reza's brother got us into a trance club in Los Feliz for free. that was a new experience, but also very freeing. we all felt like we could just let it loose on the dance floor, more that you can at a hip hop club. it was breezy
overall, it was a cool night, a lot of fun.
the weekend was good for me. i needed a break from my jobs. i needed solitude and fun with peers. i needed time at home with my roommate. and to go to PCOG, and to talk to my brother before he leaves, and to spend a day in Borders. i needed to get words from God about some things i my life. last night i stopped the car on an overlook point just past the Rose Bowl, looking over the valley and mountains north of pasadena. I poured it all out to God, and for the first time in a long time, i felt like I heard from him, and i was comforted.
recently, i have been looking for jobs again. i have applied for a few education jobs in pasadena. really, i am looking for anything full time, becasue my current jobs will end with the school year in June
When i was in Borders, i came up on some interesting books. one was called "Blue Dreams" and it was about Korean-American/African American relations before during and after the LA riots of 92. I also got a chance to look at some grafitti mags, which always takes me back, and wish i had continued with that form of artistic expression.
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
hip hop baby
one of the things I always like to ruminate on is the current state and history of hip hop culture. Most of my friends are now agreed that at this point, things are at an all time low. Turn on the radio, and what you hear is product for mass-consumption. The polished, temporary, disposable club-bangers that form a commercial industry, not a cultural movement. There is a finite amount of live artistic expression, and where it does exist, it is overshadowed and enveloped by the insatiable greed of corporate profit.
I was watching a documenary about New York city this evening. It is a trip to see the social and economic context out of which hip hop arose--- the urban blight and devestation of post-war Bronx........a city that literally burned up in the economic downfall precipitated by the Vietnam War and the destructive forces of 'urban renewal' in the 1950s and 1960s. It was here that African American and Puerto Rican youth initiated a surge, a subterranean battle against anonymity, hopelessness, the cold ugliness of federal housing projects, the flight of capital and resources from the inner city and ...injustice.
Now, hip hop (albeit in a much altered and bloated form) is a multi billion dollar global industry and a common cultural language for people all over the world.
We must know its context. We must know how White corporate America has perpetrated a monumental pillaging and plunder of Black culture......it is ironic that hip hop can now be a road to wealth for some African American men, but that the pathway to that wealth--- from the content of the music to the manufacturing of the artist's image--is controlled by massive multi-media conglomerates. CEOs and exectutives recognized that they could become rich by selling and sensationalizing an image of Black masculinity-- it is a masulinity defined by bravado, materialism, violence, aggression, misogyny........the very things that have defined America's rise to world power. These are also the ways that mainstream White America want to believe about Black males. The image of the hip hop thug is a ubiquitous and powerful one. It is an image of Black masculinity that white youth and their families will be comfortable consuming (parents may rail against it becasue it is loud, offensive, suggestive, but fundamentally, they are comfortable with the perpetuation and consumption of images and product that portray Blacks in the stereotypical ways they are comfortable with) The fashion of the 'hood' has become mainstream, and with it, an implied solidification of the status quo. Whatever Black people in their neighborhoods can come up with that is marketable, we will capitalize on.
How often do you hear on the radio or in the club music that portrays Black men as conscious, articulate, spiritual, critical of the status quo? It would not be marketable, because White America--the largest consumers of hip hop culture-- will by and large consume only images of Black people that do not suggest a threat to the status quo or challenge the racial hierarchy.
these are just some theories. it is much more complicated than this. There are exceptions to the rule, where mainstream America has allowed and embraced alternative voices.
Where are there grassroots hip hop movements in America? All over the place. In Albuquerque, local youth led the way in a Renaissance of sorts in the late 1990s with a suge of graffitti, DJing and breakdancing all united by the appeal to 'take it back to the old school.' A sizeable population of mostly Latino, but many White, Native American, Black and a few Asian youth sought to learn the roots of hip hop culture and bring it back to its pure form. This was the era of Puff Daddy and Co., larger than life icons that were far removed from the needs, desires and experiences of these kids in a mid-sized Southwestern city. Breakdancing spoke to them...they mixed it with Capoiera, a Brazillian martial arts form, and started crews all over the state. Grafitti came up, and began to thrive in an atmosphere of friendly competition and open artistic exchange and critique. DJs focused on 'digging' -- the exploration and discovery of the old funk and disco jems that formed the backbone of primordial Hip Hop. Artists, activists, and cultural figures came out of the woodwork and joined forces, exploring the links between New Mexico's indignous culture and Hip Hop, working with small time graffitti heads on non-profit funded public mural projects and collaborating with universities, schools, prisons, and youth centers.
For a while there, it almost looked like we would start 'doing it in the park,' tapping power from the streetlights for the DJs to rock a party all night long.
things done changed. It is different now, tha many people have moved on. Some still Dj, some still dance. Some went to prison. My brother joined the Army. Others got white collar jobs, or had babies. Some moved away.
it was good while it lasted.
I was watching a documenary about New York city this evening. It is a trip to see the social and economic context out of which hip hop arose--- the urban blight and devestation of post-war Bronx........a city that literally burned up in the economic downfall precipitated by the Vietnam War and the destructive forces of 'urban renewal' in the 1950s and 1960s. It was here that African American and Puerto Rican youth initiated a surge, a subterranean battle against anonymity, hopelessness, the cold ugliness of federal housing projects, the flight of capital and resources from the inner city and ...injustice.
Now, hip hop (albeit in a much altered and bloated form) is a multi billion dollar global industry and a common cultural language for people all over the world.
We must know its context. We must know how White corporate America has perpetrated a monumental pillaging and plunder of Black culture......it is ironic that hip hop can now be a road to wealth for some African American men, but that the pathway to that wealth--- from the content of the music to the manufacturing of the artist's image--is controlled by massive multi-media conglomerates. CEOs and exectutives recognized that they could become rich by selling and sensationalizing an image of Black masculinity-- it is a masulinity defined by bravado, materialism, violence, aggression, misogyny........the very things that have defined America's rise to world power. These are also the ways that mainstream White America want to believe about Black males. The image of the hip hop thug is a ubiquitous and powerful one. It is an image of Black masculinity that white youth and their families will be comfortable consuming (parents may rail against it becasue it is loud, offensive, suggestive, but fundamentally, they are comfortable with the perpetuation and consumption of images and product that portray Blacks in the stereotypical ways they are comfortable with) The fashion of the 'hood' has become mainstream, and with it, an implied solidification of the status quo. Whatever Black people in their neighborhoods can come up with that is marketable, we will capitalize on.
How often do you hear on the radio or in the club music that portrays Black men as conscious, articulate, spiritual, critical of the status quo? It would not be marketable, because White America--the largest consumers of hip hop culture-- will by and large consume only images of Black people that do not suggest a threat to the status quo or challenge the racial hierarchy.
these are just some theories. it is much more complicated than this. There are exceptions to the rule, where mainstream America has allowed and embraced alternative voices.
Where are there grassroots hip hop movements in America? All over the place. In Albuquerque, local youth led the way in a Renaissance of sorts in the late 1990s with a suge of graffitti, DJing and breakdancing all united by the appeal to 'take it back to the old school.' A sizeable population of mostly Latino, but many White, Native American, Black and a few Asian youth sought to learn the roots of hip hop culture and bring it back to its pure form. This was the era of Puff Daddy and Co., larger than life icons that were far removed from the needs, desires and experiences of these kids in a mid-sized Southwestern city. Breakdancing spoke to them...they mixed it with Capoiera, a Brazillian martial arts form, and started crews all over the state. Grafitti came up, and began to thrive in an atmosphere of friendly competition and open artistic exchange and critique. DJs focused on 'digging' -- the exploration and discovery of the old funk and disco jems that formed the backbone of primordial Hip Hop. Artists, activists, and cultural figures came out of the woodwork and joined forces, exploring the links between New Mexico's indignous culture and Hip Hop, working with small time graffitti heads on non-profit funded public mural projects and collaborating with universities, schools, prisons, and youth centers.
For a while there, it almost looked like we would start 'doing it in the park,' tapping power from the streetlights for the DJs to rock a party all night long.
things done changed. It is different now, tha many people have moved on. Some still Dj, some still dance. Some went to prison. My brother joined the Army. Others got white collar jobs, or had babies. Some moved away.
it was good while it lasted.
feet dont fail me now
i realize that my blog posts have been more toward the intense side. I am grateful that peopel have still been reading, though. i dont often have the patience to sit and read through my own friend's writing.
i am thinking of re-posting the little semi-devotional i wrote the other day--with all the successive posts i've been making i'm afraid things are getting lost in the struggle.
last night after Melinda's party and prayer with peeps about my brother and the war and hope, i went to spend the night at the guy's house on 65th street. It was a great opportunity to illuminate to them the philosophical underpinnings of 'your mom' jokes (i.e. the Universal/Platonic Ideal MOM vs. the particular, individual mother.)
Woke up at 6:30 and had a good breakfast with Jeremy before I drove to TAS. We had a staff meeting in the morning, where all of us instructinoal aides talked about supervision problems ont he playground and our roles in the clasroom. I really respect the people I work with. Most are from the neighborhood, and most are looking toward beign teachers.
Sometimes I see myself gettign a little bit mean with the kids....strict to the point where i catch myself, and have to remember that my own belief system about behavior management takes a lot of effort to put into practice. if i do not put effort into it, I will default to being rigid and authoritarian when faced with kids who are constantly making (and learning not to make) poor choices.
I've been learnign a lot about childhood behavior management these days.....
no Walden School today!! I am happy about that. It is a hard place to me, after coming from TAS....I'll explain about that later
peace
i am thinking of re-posting the little semi-devotional i wrote the other day--with all the successive posts i've been making i'm afraid things are getting lost in the struggle.
last night after Melinda's party and prayer with peeps about my brother and the war and hope, i went to spend the night at the guy's house on 65th street. It was a great opportunity to illuminate to them the philosophical underpinnings of 'your mom' jokes (i.e. the Universal/Platonic Ideal MOM vs. the particular, individual mother.)
Woke up at 6:30 and had a good breakfast with Jeremy before I drove to TAS. We had a staff meeting in the morning, where all of us instructinoal aides talked about supervision problems ont he playground and our roles in the clasroom. I really respect the people I work with. Most are from the neighborhood, and most are looking toward beign teachers.
Sometimes I see myself gettign a little bit mean with the kids....strict to the point where i catch myself, and have to remember that my own belief system about behavior management takes a lot of effort to put into practice. if i do not put effort into it, I will default to being rigid and authoritarian when faced with kids who are constantly making (and learning not to make) poor choices.
I've been learnign a lot about childhood behavior management these days.....
no Walden School today!! I am happy about that. It is a hard place to me, after coming from TAS....I'll explain about that later
peace
my God.....thank you so much.
never did i think i would have richer and richer experiences of community in each season of my life. i am so grateful for the brothers and sisters around me. my thanks to them for caring, for loving, for having fun. my thanks to God for feeding our souls.
tonight was beautiful...we came before you, God in prayer, in intimacy with each other and a desperation to seek your face
:::::::::::::::::::::::
captive Zion
captive Zion
fly us to that mountain
liberate us toward that fresh air, your healing streams....
God looks with tender compassion on his small warriors, the ones who come before him to sojourn on an unknown adventure.
Where the dignity and lives of your people are profaned, Lord, there your name is also profaned. Would that we taste and recognize the character of our times.
In my mind, in my words and my human understanding, anger can gain a ready foothold when I am confronted with the world's devastation and the temptation to become hopeless.
More than 300 years ago, my ancestors came from Spain via Mexico and stepped onto a land of sacred green mountains, pink deserts and golden flowing plains. They made this place their home, called it Nuevo Mexico, after the vanquished Mexica peoples of the valley a thousand miles to the south. Already at home there were the Dine people (known today as the Navajo) the Apache, the Comanche, the Tewa, the Towa and the Tiwa Pueblos. Also the Zuni and the Hopi. From the beginning there was the fear and hatred of people who are different. Warfare, slavery and genocide marked their early history, but it is that strange paradox of the Mexican soul that these two worlds, alien and hostile to each other, would come together to make a new, beautiful, tragic, heroic, poetic race of people......a people with no home, a people with no people, stuck between worlds and apart from the flow of 'civilized' history. My grandfathers’ grandfathers were the nomadic Indigenous of the Sangre de Cristo mountains and the plains east of the Rio Grande. Their names are forgotten to me, their ceremonies and their laughter i can no longer trace in my veins. They were also the displaced, sojourning Iberians-- bold men who came across and ocean to a new land, to begin their lives again in a strange land with strange new people. They farmed the isolated river valleys in the mountains of Northern New Mexico and Colorado. They grazed their sheep and goats on the plains between Belen and Socorro. They were Spanish, but they were also Indian....and their hearts spoke to them in both languages....
In 1848, their way of life changed. A new nation from the East spoke of a manifest destiny, ambitious designs on the continent. These were whiter people, more European people, a people who did not know the soul of the land like the people of New Mexico did. A war was fought. Treaties signed. Borders changed. But it was more than that. This, in a way, was a beginning for the person that I am today. My ancestors foun themselves subject to new laws, new government, new economics, new social arrangement. Beneath it all, the brokenness of human dignity and relationship, expressed most violently in the form of racism. it was a racism that could be seen and heard in public society, but it was also a racism that imbedded itself deeply into the consciousness of my family.
By the 1930's it was clear that their way of life was going to be gone permanently. Their land taken, their livelihoods altered by industrialization, their culture debased. As elementary school students, my grandparents were punished for speaking Spanish. The schools taught not only reading and writing, but they were places where those children could unlearn themselves, and learn to 'fit into' a society that would never fully accept them. These painful lessons sunk in deep.
Cesario Maxmiliano Chavez, born in 1925, decended from ranchers and farmers from the Rio Abajo with names like Nepomuceno Lopez, Domingo Castillo, Gabriel Pena and Luz Lucero--- was 18 years old in 1943. This government, whose global power had been built on the forcible conquest of land and resources from Brown people, now thought it necessary that Cesario, my grandfather, go to fight a war in defense of a way of life he or his family could scarcely be said to have enjoyed. He was not even allowed to finish high school. The war was for the liberation of the world from evil, they said. It would also ensure that this modern Babylon would be the world's uncontested economic an political power, and that consensus at home would be enforced by any means necessary (suppression of minority groups, political radicals, labor)
On the islands of the western Pacific, Cesario fought against another people who were different...in behavior, belief an appearance. It was easy to convince the common soldier that his enemy was evil and must be destroyed. After all, the powers of this nation had been doing that for generations, even succeeding in convincing the alien peoples within their borders that this was true. Many slaves, immigrant laborers and indigenous people know all too well the self hate of internal racism that leads to self destruction. On the reservation, alcoholism and suicide are the largest social problems.
Maybe it was those lessons of fear and mistrust of the 'other' that my grandfather learned from being in the military that made it natural for him to strive for the normalcy of White middle class Americanism and separate his children from the culture that was already dying in him.
It did not die, however. It lives on. It lives on in him, and in his children and children's children, however faintly.
This is my journey. I was born with two warring worlds already a part of me. I was born in the midst of the death of one world and the triumph of another. In elementary school, I was socialized into the majority culture-- both by the school and by my parent, who were themselves culturally dislocated and trying to know what to do with the tension. Later on in my life, I made choices with the information I had at hand.....the people who looked like me an had the same last names were the ones who are ignored, got in trouble, feared, hated. I would consciously turn away from that part of me an become as 'white' as I could. It was not hard. My parents had done it, and the schools were ample training grounds.
After several years, I did arrive at a liberated consciousness of myself. I began a path of healing. I became angry, I backlashed, got militant, struggled with my identity and shame issues, blamed my parents, looked in many places for answers.
It is another long story about how God met me in the midst of my journey and began to work a powerful healing in me from the inside out.
In that, I am becoming one with a heart for reconciling, for joining others on the path of pilgrimage-- so that we can find our true names and re-learn our true languages. New Mexico is my home, and I carry its contradictions and pains in my blood. But in a truer sense, Zion is my home, and I carry the contradiction and pains of living in a world where I do not really belong.....where I cannot fulfill my destiny, my identity because of sin, my separation from God. We are all sojourners moving toward a land that was promised to us, a land where sorrow will be wiped away and the rightful King will reign with justice and healing. Yet our God builds this kingdom in the midst of a flawed reality.
Why does my brother have to go fight a war with a military machine whose purpose it is to protect with violence and destruction the economic dominance, comfort and leisure of the world’s wealthy few? Why is the destruction of innocent Iraqi cities, families, women, men and children necessary for the ‘homeland security’? Why are prison and the military the only choices men of color in urban areas have in this country?
I am tempted to be hopeless about the world. These questions and questions about my identity come up, and I struggle to know how to cope and understand in a way that God would want me to.
Yet, in my friends, those willing to pray with me and be in solidarity, I have found peace and hope. In God’s promises I find hope. The prophet Jeremiah says ‘Because my people are rushed, I am crushed.’ The exiles in Babylon wept, and hung up their harps when they remembered their homeland, the land of their ancestors that God had been so gracious to give to them. There is a time for grief, for lament.
But remember, brothers and sisters….we will enter Zion with singing!
There will be no more curse
And the Lion will lie down with the Lamb
And our King will sit on his throne.
Let us pray for that day, today and each day.
never did i think i would have richer and richer experiences of community in each season of my life. i am so grateful for the brothers and sisters around me. my thanks to them for caring, for loving, for having fun. my thanks to God for feeding our souls.
tonight was beautiful...we came before you, God in prayer, in intimacy with each other and a desperation to seek your face
:::::::::::::::::::::::
captive Zion
captive Zion
fly us to that mountain
liberate us toward that fresh air, your healing streams....
God looks with tender compassion on his small warriors, the ones who come before him to sojourn on an unknown adventure.
Where the dignity and lives of your people are profaned, Lord, there your name is also profaned. Would that we taste and recognize the character of our times.
In my mind, in my words and my human understanding, anger can gain a ready foothold when I am confronted with the world's devastation and the temptation to become hopeless.
More than 300 years ago, my ancestors came from Spain via Mexico and stepped onto a land of sacred green mountains, pink deserts and golden flowing plains. They made this place their home, called it Nuevo Mexico, after the vanquished Mexica peoples of the valley a thousand miles to the south. Already at home there were the Dine people (known today as the Navajo) the Apache, the Comanche, the Tewa, the Towa and the Tiwa Pueblos. Also the Zuni and the Hopi. From the beginning there was the fear and hatred of people who are different. Warfare, slavery and genocide marked their early history, but it is that strange paradox of the Mexican soul that these two worlds, alien and hostile to each other, would come together to make a new, beautiful, tragic, heroic, poetic race of people......a people with no home, a people with no people, stuck between worlds and apart from the flow of 'civilized' history. My grandfathers’ grandfathers were the nomadic Indigenous of the Sangre de Cristo mountains and the plains east of the Rio Grande. Their names are forgotten to me, their ceremonies and their laughter i can no longer trace in my veins. They were also the displaced, sojourning Iberians-- bold men who came across and ocean to a new land, to begin their lives again in a strange land with strange new people. They farmed the isolated river valleys in the mountains of Northern New Mexico and Colorado. They grazed their sheep and goats on the plains between Belen and Socorro. They were Spanish, but they were also Indian....and their hearts spoke to them in both languages....
In 1848, their way of life changed. A new nation from the East spoke of a manifest destiny, ambitious designs on the continent. These were whiter people, more European people, a people who did not know the soul of the land like the people of New Mexico did. A war was fought. Treaties signed. Borders changed. But it was more than that. This, in a way, was a beginning for the person that I am today. My ancestors foun themselves subject to new laws, new government, new economics, new social arrangement. Beneath it all, the brokenness of human dignity and relationship, expressed most violently in the form of racism. it was a racism that could be seen and heard in public society, but it was also a racism that imbedded itself deeply into the consciousness of my family.
By the 1930's it was clear that their way of life was going to be gone permanently. Their land taken, their livelihoods altered by industrialization, their culture debased. As elementary school students, my grandparents were punished for speaking Spanish. The schools taught not only reading and writing, but they were places where those children could unlearn themselves, and learn to 'fit into' a society that would never fully accept them. These painful lessons sunk in deep.
Cesario Maxmiliano Chavez, born in 1925, decended from ranchers and farmers from the Rio Abajo with names like Nepomuceno Lopez, Domingo Castillo, Gabriel Pena and Luz Lucero--- was 18 years old in 1943. This government, whose global power had been built on the forcible conquest of land and resources from Brown people, now thought it necessary that Cesario, my grandfather, go to fight a war in defense of a way of life he or his family could scarcely be said to have enjoyed. He was not even allowed to finish high school. The war was for the liberation of the world from evil, they said. It would also ensure that this modern Babylon would be the world's uncontested economic an political power, and that consensus at home would be enforced by any means necessary (suppression of minority groups, political radicals, labor)
On the islands of the western Pacific, Cesario fought against another people who were different...in behavior, belief an appearance. It was easy to convince the common soldier that his enemy was evil and must be destroyed. After all, the powers of this nation had been doing that for generations, even succeeding in convincing the alien peoples within their borders that this was true. Many slaves, immigrant laborers and indigenous people know all too well the self hate of internal racism that leads to self destruction. On the reservation, alcoholism and suicide are the largest social problems.
Maybe it was those lessons of fear and mistrust of the 'other' that my grandfather learned from being in the military that made it natural for him to strive for the normalcy of White middle class Americanism and separate his children from the culture that was already dying in him.
It did not die, however. It lives on. It lives on in him, and in his children and children's children, however faintly.
This is my journey. I was born with two warring worlds already a part of me. I was born in the midst of the death of one world and the triumph of another. In elementary school, I was socialized into the majority culture-- both by the school and by my parent, who were themselves culturally dislocated and trying to know what to do with the tension. Later on in my life, I made choices with the information I had at hand.....the people who looked like me an had the same last names were the ones who are ignored, got in trouble, feared, hated. I would consciously turn away from that part of me an become as 'white' as I could. It was not hard. My parents had done it, and the schools were ample training grounds.
After several years, I did arrive at a liberated consciousness of myself. I began a path of healing. I became angry, I backlashed, got militant, struggled with my identity and shame issues, blamed my parents, looked in many places for answers.
It is another long story about how God met me in the midst of my journey and began to work a powerful healing in me from the inside out.
In that, I am becoming one with a heart for reconciling, for joining others on the path of pilgrimage-- so that we can find our true names and re-learn our true languages. New Mexico is my home, and I carry its contradictions and pains in my blood. But in a truer sense, Zion is my home, and I carry the contradiction and pains of living in a world where I do not really belong.....where I cannot fulfill my destiny, my identity because of sin, my separation from God. We are all sojourners moving toward a land that was promised to us, a land where sorrow will be wiped away and the rightful King will reign with justice and healing. Yet our God builds this kingdom in the midst of a flawed reality.
Why does my brother have to go fight a war with a military machine whose purpose it is to protect with violence and destruction the economic dominance, comfort and leisure of the world’s wealthy few? Why is the destruction of innocent Iraqi cities, families, women, men and children necessary for the ‘homeland security’? Why are prison and the military the only choices men of color in urban areas have in this country?
I am tempted to be hopeless about the world. These questions and questions about my identity come up, and I struggle to know how to cope and understand in a way that God would want me to.
Yet, in my friends, those willing to pray with me and be in solidarity, I have found peace and hope. In God’s promises I find hope. The prophet Jeremiah says ‘Because my people are rushed, I am crushed.’ The exiles in Babylon wept, and hung up their harps when they remembered their homeland, the land of their ancestors that God had been so gracious to give to them. There is a time for grief, for lament.
But remember, brothers and sisters….we will enter Zion with singing!
There will be no more curse
And the Lion will lie down with the Lamb
And our King will sit on his throne.
Let us pray for that day, today and each day.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
props to the guys for the conversation last night. It has been a while since I had a good, substantive conversation about race. It was so important that we had that conversation. I find that there is a lot I need to learn (and un-learn) about the way I percieve other people and myself in the context of race and class. I am grateful for a context in which I can be blessed by a group of men who want to learn from each other, teach each other, offer and recieve wisdom, humbly serve and understand and move into deeper, more interdepended reconciled relationships.
the conversation was the latest of many recent siginificant moments in my thinking about race and my own identity. Recently, I have been considering the meaning of my ethnic/cultural identity in light of the Gospel and Gods action in my life. The insights I have gained have pointed toward what I think are clearer paths of healing for me. I will write more in detail about what i have been thinking of in my next post. stay tuned.
the conversation was the latest of many recent siginificant moments in my thinking about race and my own identity. Recently, I have been considering the meaning of my ethnic/cultural identity in light of the Gospel and Gods action in my life. The insights I have gained have pointed toward what I think are clearer paths of healing for me. I will write more in detail about what i have been thinking of in my next post. stay tuned.
rocking
i gotta say its been a good day
a couple more, then we can commence the maxin'
i have to come up with some bible studies for the spring for the high school youth.
and read for SP.
I like the commute from Pasadena to LA. I get to listen to my music, and also take in the physical geography of the city...the graff on the overpasses, the different residential and commercial areas...
It is interesting seeing the different sectors of South LA around the 110 corridor. For Servant Partners meetings, we are in the old residential tracts.....historical neighborhoods that have been centers of demographic and social changes for decades...
For my job, I find myself in the light industrial areas of the city....the textile factories, sweatshops....
a couple more, then we can commence the maxin'
i have to come up with some bible studies for the spring for the high school youth.
and read for SP.
I like the commute from Pasadena to LA. I get to listen to my music, and also take in the physical geography of the city...the graff on the overpasses, the different residential and commercial areas...
It is interesting seeing the different sectors of South LA around the 110 corridor. For Servant Partners meetings, we are in the old residential tracts.....historical neighborhoods that have been centers of demographic and social changes for decades...
For my job, I find myself in the light industrial areas of the city....the textile factories, sweatshops....
Monday, November 22, 2004
"...like birds from Egypt, like doves from Assyria..."
In Genesis, when Adam and Eve decided to hide the shame of their nakedness from God, hiding among the trees, God walks through in the cool of the day to find them. The strangeness and tenderness of his words always drew me: The Lord God called to them, "Where are you?"
Of course God probably knew where they were. But he asked anyway. What tone must that question have been in? What intimacy, what concern? This was when things were perfect, when we knew our true names, and lived in our true homes. The tragedy of the fall is in man's rejection of God, but when I read these words of God, the gravity of this monumental fall hits home to me. GOD for the first time, has to ask the disturbing question, the question whose implications are so sad, and will permeate all subsequent history. "Where are you?" "Where have you gone?"
it implies that we are not where we should be
it implies that someone who cares about us is seeking us.
In asking that question for the first time, I think we also asked ourselves that question for the first time. "Where am I?" "What is my name?" "Where do I belong?"
In the world i live in, I see so many people who are spending their energy beneath their dignity as God's beloveds. If only the children and youth of Los Angeles knew their true names! If only they lived in a world that did not assign value to them based on economic status, language ability, immigration status, produtcivity.....would that they be FOUND.......would that they find themsleves in their true homes, free of shame and alienation.
in my own ways i hide my shame from God. In all the stress and activity of my car accident, my jobs, the day-to day chores of life, i know God is there, saying "Where are you?"
Isaiah 25 says that in Zion, God will remove that shroud that covers all nations, he will swallow up death forever and wipe the tears from every eye.
That is what it means to be found. That is what it means to be where you belong.
Of course God probably knew where they were. But he asked anyway. What tone must that question have been in? What intimacy, what concern? This was when things were perfect, when we knew our true names, and lived in our true homes. The tragedy of the fall is in man's rejection of God, but when I read these words of God, the gravity of this monumental fall hits home to me. GOD for the first time, has to ask the disturbing question, the question whose implications are so sad, and will permeate all subsequent history. "Where are you?" "Where have you gone?"
it implies that we are not where we should be
it implies that someone who cares about us is seeking us.
In asking that question for the first time, I think we also asked ourselves that question for the first time. "Where am I?" "What is my name?" "Where do I belong?"
In the world i live in, I see so many people who are spending their energy beneath their dignity as God's beloveds. If only the children and youth of Los Angeles knew their true names! If only they lived in a world that did not assign value to them based on economic status, language ability, immigration status, produtcivity.....would that they be FOUND.......would that they find themsleves in their true homes, free of shame and alienation.
in my own ways i hide my shame from God. In all the stress and activity of my car accident, my jobs, the day-to day chores of life, i know God is there, saying "Where are you?"
Isaiah 25 says that in Zion, God will remove that shroud that covers all nations, he will swallow up death forever and wipe the tears from every eye.
That is what it means to be found. That is what it means to be where you belong.
life as a shorty shouldnt be so rough
man
i was flossin in my two-door Hyundai
It was early in the morning on a Sunday,
I was going down the one-way
in the rain and dark, i took the sharp turn from the 10 eastbound to the 110 northbound. i lost control and started spinning around, slammed over the curb and popped my tire. i pulled over, cussing, anticipating the worst. i got out, and saw green fluid leaking out rapidly. i set to work changing my tire...which took a good hour becasue the bolts were on so tight.....i drove slowly, blindly and lop-sided through downtown, Chinatown and finally ended up in south pas. got home at 3 30 am. All day Sunday i was stressing aboout insurance, paying for repairs, tires, getting to work on time the next day and all of that...
today my back and shoulders are sore, i think becasue of stress.
Today at work, I learned a little bit more about how to resolve conflict among 2nd graders, and mold little people's character in positive ways. I observed the teacher i work for, Ms. Moore ( a teacher of 27 years, and a really good one) work some quality reconciliation between two girls who are 'best friends' but cant seem to stop hurting each other's feelings. I respect that so much, and I cherish the opportunity to learn from teachers who love their students and communities like those at the Accelerated School do.
on another note, right across the street from TAS, on Main and MLK Blvd., I have found bar-none the best taco spot I have yet been to. What makes it good is that they hand-make the tortillas right there***** they're all nice and fluffy and isht. And the meat is fresher than a moist towelette. Word to Big Bird.
i was flossin in my two-door Hyundai
It was early in the morning on a Sunday,
I was going down the one-way
in the rain and dark, i took the sharp turn from the 10 eastbound to the 110 northbound. i lost control and started spinning around, slammed over the curb and popped my tire. i pulled over, cussing, anticipating the worst. i got out, and saw green fluid leaking out rapidly. i set to work changing my tire...which took a good hour becasue the bolts were on so tight.....i drove slowly, blindly and lop-sided through downtown, Chinatown and finally ended up in south pas. got home at 3 30 am. All day Sunday i was stressing aboout insurance, paying for repairs, tires, getting to work on time the next day and all of that...
today my back and shoulders are sore, i think becasue of stress.
Today at work, I learned a little bit more about how to resolve conflict among 2nd graders, and mold little people's character in positive ways. I observed the teacher i work for, Ms. Moore ( a teacher of 27 years, and a really good one) work some quality reconciliation between two girls who are 'best friends' but cant seem to stop hurting each other's feelings. I respect that so much, and I cherish the opportunity to learn from teachers who love their students and communities like those at the Accelerated School do.
on another note, right across the street from TAS, on Main and MLK Blvd., I have found bar-none the best taco spot I have yet been to. What makes it good is that they hand-make the tortillas right there***** they're all nice and fluffy and isht. And the meat is fresher than a moist towelette. Word to Big Bird.
Saturday, November 20, 2004
get evaporated
I want to get back into the stream of consciousness....
When I went back to Albuquerque, and was driving around I realized that the city I grew up in is a lot like many of the small, western towns I have driven through--Flagstaff, Holbrook, Winslow......Gallup...Places where the railroad was the genesis, where downtowns are small, nostalgic and dusty...places that seem to be defined by their insignificance in the vastness of the Western desert. Albuquerque is surrounded by a landscape more ancient, more vast, more beautiful than anything people could hope to construct on that spot betwen the Sandias and the West Mesa volcanoes. Yet, Burque is different, because in its bulging size (by NM standards) it is reminescent of Los Angeles, with its mix of high and low density residential tracts, the military/prison industrial complex, the ubiquitous automobile, the strip malls, and the Valley-Heights inequality.
This combination perplexes me. Damn.
Culture seems more unified there in Burque. People cling to a small-town mentality, choosing to ingore the growing pains of a mid-sized metropolis. I roll through Los Duranes, Los Candelarias, San Jose Barrio.....places where the original Burquenos lived simple farming lives for generations....they are forgotten, archaic, decayed, remnants of a dignified (and shameful) past.
Los Angeles confuses me. Where is its historical core? Where is its memory?
Last weekend, i was with my brother along the train tracks. It was a cold, grey day. John, me and Evan Moore(by brother's friend from middle school) had gone down to San Jo to take flicks of the piece John, Rock, Buket and Banks had rocked the night before on a new chrome holy roller in main yards. We were walking along the tracks, between abandoned warehouses, dead grass, industrial wreckage....a place that was depressing in its forgotten-ness. This is the residue of industrialization...so familiar in this country's cities. rusted barbed wire fences, unused rail spurs overgrow with tumbleweeds and vagrants' garbage, piled of old scrap metal that had been sitting there for years. No other people to be seen. We came to a place by a crumbling brick building sat beside an old rail spur. A chain link fence with razor wire on the top. apparently someone still thought it was worth their effort to protect the rooftop from guerilla artists like my brother, known as Veck on the streets by taggers, OG''s, homeless people and 16-20 year old Jainas from Belen to Santa Fe.
I sat watch while Evan and John climbed through the delapitated mess to catch the flicks. I sat crouched and i watched the wind blow across the grass and old newspaper in frot of me. I realized, this is the kind of place I am drawn to. My parents think it strange that i would choose to live in an "urban area." But this is not a new tension. since i was young, i loved the chaos of obscure corners, decaying city blacks, old buildings and refuse with stories to tell. crouching there by the tracks, I felt like i could read this place like no one else could. It, and every place like it, was like a home that would hide me, understand me, protect me from the polished and busy mainstream, the glare of material life and consumption and image in the world on the outside.
John loved this reality more than I did. he made his home in the urban wastelands of this city, of Denver, Las Vegas, El Paso, New York.......
I remember last march when him and i got off the subway on a random stop in the south Bronx. Sidewalks torn up, empty lots beside warehouses and tenements littered with garbage, dirty melted snow collecting in muddy puddles under graffiti stained walls. i felt the same feeling. we didnt have to talk to each other. we knew it was a place of repose and affirmation to us. on the other side of the country, but the same home.
for me, it is imperative that i enter into the human life of these places. i am called to love the city, to become a neighbor. to John, he is alone in this hostile environment. Writing a stylized name on the trains and rooftops is a way to solidify his place here. it is an empassioned strike against the anonymity that engulfs the lives of so many kids like him.....warfare...over who will have a name in the urban space---McDonalds, or John Vigil. The corporations, or the culturally dislocated youth of a forgotten city. Who decides who will have the right to occupy that public space? Why is his art, his name less legitimate than the billboards for beer, cars, TV shows and fast food places that thrust themselves into our field of vision at every turn....
more later
When I went back to Albuquerque, and was driving around I realized that the city I grew up in is a lot like many of the small, western towns I have driven through--Flagstaff, Holbrook, Winslow......Gallup...Places where the railroad was the genesis, where downtowns are small, nostalgic and dusty...places that seem to be defined by their insignificance in the vastness of the Western desert. Albuquerque is surrounded by a landscape more ancient, more vast, more beautiful than anything people could hope to construct on that spot betwen the Sandias and the West Mesa volcanoes. Yet, Burque is different, because in its bulging size (by NM standards) it is reminescent of Los Angeles, with its mix of high and low density residential tracts, the military/prison industrial complex, the ubiquitous automobile, the strip malls, and the Valley-Heights inequality.
This combination perplexes me. Damn.
Culture seems more unified there in Burque. People cling to a small-town mentality, choosing to ingore the growing pains of a mid-sized metropolis. I roll through Los Duranes, Los Candelarias, San Jose Barrio.....places where the original Burquenos lived simple farming lives for generations....they are forgotten, archaic, decayed, remnants of a dignified (and shameful) past.
Los Angeles confuses me. Where is its historical core? Where is its memory?
Last weekend, i was with my brother along the train tracks. It was a cold, grey day. John, me and Evan Moore(by brother's friend from middle school) had gone down to San Jo to take flicks of the piece John, Rock, Buket and Banks had rocked the night before on a new chrome holy roller in main yards. We were walking along the tracks, between abandoned warehouses, dead grass, industrial wreckage....a place that was depressing in its forgotten-ness. This is the residue of industrialization...so familiar in this country's cities. rusted barbed wire fences, unused rail spurs overgrow with tumbleweeds and vagrants' garbage, piled of old scrap metal that had been sitting there for years. No other people to be seen. We came to a place by a crumbling brick building sat beside an old rail spur. A chain link fence with razor wire on the top. apparently someone still thought it was worth their effort to protect the rooftop from guerilla artists like my brother, known as Veck on the streets by taggers, OG''s, homeless people and 16-20 year old Jainas from Belen to Santa Fe.
I sat watch while Evan and John climbed through the delapitated mess to catch the flicks. I sat crouched and i watched the wind blow across the grass and old newspaper in frot of me. I realized, this is the kind of place I am drawn to. My parents think it strange that i would choose to live in an "urban area." But this is not a new tension. since i was young, i loved the chaos of obscure corners, decaying city blacks, old buildings and refuse with stories to tell. crouching there by the tracks, I felt like i could read this place like no one else could. It, and every place like it, was like a home that would hide me, understand me, protect me from the polished and busy mainstream, the glare of material life and consumption and image in the world on the outside.
John loved this reality more than I did. he made his home in the urban wastelands of this city, of Denver, Las Vegas, El Paso, New York.......
I remember last march when him and i got off the subway on a random stop in the south Bronx. Sidewalks torn up, empty lots beside warehouses and tenements littered with garbage, dirty melted snow collecting in muddy puddles under graffiti stained walls. i felt the same feeling. we didnt have to talk to each other. we knew it was a place of repose and affirmation to us. on the other side of the country, but the same home.
for me, it is imperative that i enter into the human life of these places. i am called to love the city, to become a neighbor. to John, he is alone in this hostile environment. Writing a stylized name on the trains and rooftops is a way to solidify his place here. it is an empassioned strike against the anonymity that engulfs the lives of so many kids like him.....warfare...over who will have a name in the urban space---McDonalds, or John Vigil. The corporations, or the culturally dislocated youth of a forgotten city. Who decides who will have the right to occupy that public space? Why is his art, his name less legitimate than the billboards for beer, cars, TV shows and fast food places that thrust themselves into our field of vision at every turn....
more later
In The Beginning.....
This is it....I am beginning this Blog action. I dont even have a computer, but i was feeling left out and i figured this could be a good way for me to rock the metaphorical M I C in a public and candid way. Keep an eye out for upcoming installments.
word up
word up
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