Tracy Chapman

My dear roomie Leah just awakened me to the music of Tracy Chapman, and I find that she gives a voice to the unspoken things that I've been wanting to say.
Of course, she asks the question we've all been asking: Why?

Why?
Why do the babies starve
When there's enough food to feed the world
Why when there's so many of us
Are there people still alone

Why are the missiles called peace keepers
When they're aimed to kill
Why is a woman still not safe
When she's in her home

Love is hate
War is peace
No is yes
And we're all free

But somebody's gonna have to answer
The time is coming soon
Amidst all these questions and contradictions
There're some who seek the truth

But somebody's gonna have to answer
The time is coming soon
When the blind remove their blinders
And the speechless speak the truth

Gay Students at Bethel. . . .

This article was recently shown to me by a friend, and I hope that all of you who may read this infernal blog will actually click on it, read it, and take it to heart. . . .and grieve over it. Is this what the church is supposed to be about? I don't think so. . . .
http://www.equalityride.com/article.php?article_id=19

Rosa Parks

Two days ago, Rosa Parks, a truly great woman, died of natural causes. Now, I think we must ask the question: are all the things that Mrs. Parks lived and fought for, are those dreams realized? Or have we taken several steps backwards? She dedicated her life to equality for everyone, and has that become more of a reality today. . . . .or not? I can't help asking myself that question. And how can I live to carry on her ideals?

"Invisible Children"

I just watched the documentary "Invisible Children" with my World Challenge group, and I truly am now. . . . .heavy. By the end of the film, there were tears rolling down my face, and my roommate was sobbing. It is the kind of movie that shakes you, and makes you feel sick to your stomach.

"We want peace. Tell the American government that we want peace."

There is a civil war going on in Southern Sudan, and it has been going on for the past 19 years. The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has been fighting to take over the government, and it has been a time of genocide, violence and crisis. In order to keep their army filled, the LRA takes to the villages and kidnaps young children, in order to bring them into the army, brainwash them and teach them to fight. The children are indoctrinated with violence and murder. Thousands of children fear being abducted from their homes in the villages, and so they walk 6 miles every night into a larger city to sleep in the streets where they will be moderately safe. They live in utter fear, afraid that they will be taken and forced to kill, or lest they be killed themselves. These children are young, some not very much older than toddlers. The images of their sufferings causes me to feel sick, because there has been this dire need for decades, and we have done nothing about it. I just spent an hour being confronted with the pain in Sudan, and then I am walking around the halls of my university, feeling as if no one gives a care in the world.

This is not how it should be. The people in Sudan are human beings too. Who will speak for them? Something must be done. . . . . .there should not BE such injustice in the world.

My heart hurts for justice to be done. . . . .

"Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true." -Buddha

Lonely. . . .

Do you ever feel like you know tons of people, have countless acquaintances, and know hundreds of names, but yet you still have a loneliness that still haunts you?

I have couple hundred friends on Facebook. So what? I don't really give a shit. What does that mean, except that I can have pithy conversations and interactions and friendships with many people, but how many of them TRULY know me? None.

I think that I am good at giving the illusion that I have lots of friends and that my time is well spent in social interactions. . . .but actually, I am alone. I have maybe two or three friends with whom I am honest and real, but other than that, I am alone most of the time. Sometimes, I just wish for someone to be near me, to touch me, to let me know that I am not so alone. Perhaps these are just my thoughts that are stemming from my quiet night here at work, but perhaps not. There are more things that cause me to think about this. For example, I check my email daily (sometimes more than once a day), and it is always in vain, because it is weeks in between any personal email that I receive. I carry my cell phone around with me. . . .but it's more like a dead Giga Pet (remember those?) than a means of connection to the outside world. No one ever calls me. I am driven into myself, into my own thoughts, or perhaps I resign myself to it.

Please, someone tell me that I not the only one that feels this acute loneliness. . . .

Are we all doomed to wander as unfamiliar souls, passing each other in our mass sea of individualism, too busy to give the time of day or share a poetic thought. . . . .intimacy is only for those who are foolish, because they dare to give up precious time in order to be known.

I write on this blog, because it is like a faceless friend to me. It doesn't talk back, it just listens to all the things I need to express. I am too afraid to write an email that is this blisteringly honest to a friend, because, perhaps they won't write back, or maybe they won't really care. A blog is like sending out my thoughts into some faceless void, it alleviates my loneliness for a moment. Only a moment. Because once I hit "post" and my thoughts are now held out in the void that is cyberspace, I once again am alone. No voice to speak with, no arms to be embraced by. . . . .just me.

Perhaps that's what life is becoming. . . . .just to be alone. . . . . .what a melancholy thought. . . . .

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint.
When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me communist."
-Dom Helder Camara

World of Devastation

My friend Cara sent out this email to our World Challenge committee this morning:

"I don't know what to say or what to write. I know that disasters are piling up like stones on a monument to fragility. Over twenty thousand people are dead from the earthquake in India and Pakistan. More than a thousand have died just in Guatemala in mudslides after Hurricane Stan hit Central America, right on land that I once placed my feet. Our own country is reeling from Katrina and Rita. People are dying from flooding on our east coast and from a stampede in South Korea and from malnutrition and murder in Sudan and all over Africa and the world.
What can we say? What can we write? Can we stand and hold candles and sing or pray or have a moment of silence? Can we cry in public and send help somehow?Is there any community of mourning here? What can we do? Please? Anything? CanI do more than sit at a computer and stare through tears at still words and phrases? I am overwhelmed."

Here is a link to the BBC coverage on Guatemalan mudslides: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4324038.stm

There are thousands of people who are buried in mudslides, and they never could have known. Who WILL mourn for them? Our world is being torn apart by these huge disasters, and we live life like any other day? Shouldn't we fall to our knees and weep for the humanity that has been greatly lost?
Do I even mourn that much for these people, or do I simply continue through each day as well, not affected by it either?
I wish that more people would mourn for tragedy. . . .but yet I continue on in comfort. The real revolution of chance has to start with myself. . . . .

Salsa Dancing!

"Bailas muy bien, puedo tener tu numero? Podemos ir a comer o bailar alguna vez?"

And that is how the pick-up lines were tonight. . . .so smooth, which made me so awkward.

Well, anyway, I went salsa dancing tonight with my dear friend Emily Whitmore. It is a strange social phenomenon, this ritual of dancing. I enjoy it very much, to be able to move so quickly to the music and feel like you actually know what you're doing (I hope that I LOOK like I know what I'm doing, but I don't care if I don't). If you sit off to the side of the dance floor, you have to look around at nothing in particular until a random guy comes up and looks you in the eye and asks you to dance. The woman never asks the man, or at least that's how it seems. Sometimes when I've gone dancing here in the cities, I come home feeling classy and flamboyant (can I use that word?), but other times, I come back feeling trashy and gross. And sometimes I feel a little bit in between. Some men are great to dance with and lead so incredibly well, while other guys are just creepy and make you want to run and hide in the bathroom.

Oh well, I might as well enjoy my single days while I can, and go out dancing as much as possible. Gosh, I still have the beat of salsa music stuck in my head, and the smell of bizarre Hispanic cologne on my clothes. Ahhh, life in the city. . . .

Thoughts about humanity

It's an interesting social phenomenon, that people come online and create a blog or a xanga site, in order to express themselves freely, or create something that shows who they are and what they are about. I don't know why I come on here, but yet it's like there's something in me that drives me to write and to think and to wonder about life. . . .and it's good to know that there are thousands and millions of bloggers (which I sometimes surf) who are attempting to do the same thing.

Tonight, my mind is awash with thoughts of war and hatred. I began reading "Night" by Elie Wiesel while I'm here at work tonight. I could not get past the first 20 pages, because that was all I could handle for tonight. It is an utterly sobering book, which dodges around hope, but then wistfully settles into melancholy.

I can't help but ask: why do humans hate? Why is there a tendency within human nature to pick out our enemies and choose to despise and oppress them? I challenge anyone to think of a society (either today or in history) that did not have some kind of oppression in its annals of history? Our American history is rife with many instances of oppression (whether or not we choose to see them), such as the genocide of native peoples by Columbus, the abuse of Native Americans for hundreds of years, enslavement of Africans during our nation's infancy, racism throughout the years, maltreatment of immigrants, and even now, suspicion of Muslims within our country. What are we so afraid of? Why does the name Communist strike fear into our hearts, rather than desire for understanding? I've been reading quite a bit on Marx for several of my classes lately, and I am finding that I enjoy his ideas and theories quite a lot, and I am beginning to wonder why we fear Marxism so damn much. I know that we in America see Che Guevara as a rebel and communist, but I see him as a dynamic and beautiful individual, who was about the people. Perhaps are we more about bureaucracy and rationalization of society than we are about PEOPLE? What is happening to us in America, and throughout the world? Globalization is not going to be the solution to all of our problems, if anything, I believe it will cause more problems than it solves. Perhaps we are trying to employ solutions that aren't even remotely related to the problems. Why do we not take a holistic view of society, rather than picking out the one or two things that annoy us and focusing on those? My heart grieves for how the Christian community has ostracized the gay and lesbian population of our country. If Jesus were alive today, I believe that he would be spending his time with them (rather than with pious Christians), affirming them as human beings, rather than social outcasts.

Perhaps where we all should start is by reclaiming the idea that every single person is HUMAN. The homeless man who stands on the street two blocks from my home, he is a human being. he people who are being killed or tortured in Sudan, they are real people. The countless hundreds and thousands who have been affected by hurricanes in the past month, they are all valuable individuals. Perhaps if we saw humanity in such a way (instead of people who are faceless and nameless), then maybe we would realize something about how God might see the world. . . . .

Just maybe. . . .

It's damn cold out today. . .

For the love, it's quite cold and dreary and melancholy today. It makes for a good conversation starter. "Damn, it's cold out today." Duh, thank you Captain Obvious. I choose not to complain about the cold weather, because I choose to be grateful for the fact that I can feel it. It's almost like an analogy for life. . . .if you feel pain or joy, you at least know that you are alive and real. Feeling the cold in the morning when I step out of my car is a good reminder that I am alive and that I can feel.
It's already the second month of the semester. . . . and I am quite deep into my "senior year existential crisis." They don't prep you for this in Freshman Sem. Sometimes I just want to say, "Fuck it all," and sit on the couch in my sweats and watch sappy movies. Oh, wait, I did that all day yesterday. Wow, I'm closer to my goal than I thought. Ambition? What's that? I think I've lost all of that. Apathy? Now that's something I'm a little more familiar with right now. Let's just say it's because I'm human. . . .
Now I've got to hurry up and get on with life. . . .like, go study or something. Whatever.

Minnesotans and their damn weather. . .

Have you ever noticed that Minnesotans are NEVER, EVER satisfied with the weather? If it's hot out, they're whining because they're sweating and getting sunburned. If it's raining, they're bitching about wanting it to be sunny. If it's muggy or foggy, they want it to be clear and cool. Hell, I ALWAYS love the weather, because I think that we ought to co-exist with nature, not hate it and try to tame it. I don't think it can be tamed. We ought to celebrate it. My good friend Dani was wondering out loud the other day: "Why are people so afraid of getting wet in the rain?" I wonder the same thing. I guess it ruins their hair or clothes or something. . . .but I think it's a beautiful thing, to get wet in the rain.
Suck it up, and enjoy the beautiful weather around us. Someday, you'll wish you appreciated it more. By then, it will be too late. . . .