Baraka means Blessing (Part 1)

This one will be short.

Two interesting things. I watched The Boys of Baraka and Hardwood on KQED (public television) last night. A lot of thoughts came to me about my own experiences in the ghetto, and learning about the crush of poverty and hopelessness in cities here and far away. Even though I point myself back into the direction of the fringes, I think I’ve drifted a bit further away from it all in thought and spirit. TBOB of reminded me about the grave reality of unjustice. I nodded, laughed, and almost cried, recalling all of the friends that I’ve met in Atlanta and Oakland. I remembered the guys I coached in Atlanta and the violence and frustration, and the desperation to survive that they lived each day in the projects. I was really close to staying in Atlanta, just to be with them. I don’t see life in the lens of regret, but that one still kind of haunts me.

I wish you could have been there with me in Jonesborough South, or Leila Valley, two enormous and violent projects in our Atlanta neighborhood. I wish you could have stood there for five minutes. I wonder if you’d ever question your own sense of entitlement. I wonder if you’d even bat an eye at affirmative action. We can argue and conjecture all day about systems and theories. We can use hot words like poverty, justice, and accountability but when was the last time that we were hungry, hopeless, or forgotten?

Poverty has become an exercise of intellectualism for myself. I have issues of entitlement, and frustration with making enough money. It’s unfair to me that I have no pension plans and that social security is something I’m paying for others and not myself. It troubles me that I have such little success with my BA in Visual Arts. I confess that I align my life to a system of goals and accomplishments that may seem to be more cultural than real to the Kingdom of God.

In Atlanta, I learned that poverty kills people. People die violently, and it comes in all shapes and sizes. By bullets. By the way of miseducation. By the way of racism. By the way of hope that is crushed to nothing. I learned that people can be alive, but their spirits dead inside. I learned that people could be bare with nothing, but be alive with a great spirit inside of them. Beautiful children were ready to bloom, but no one was there to shine love onto them, or to give them good water, or to prepare their soil where they rested. All of it was rocky, dry, and poisoned. I knew some who made it, but it was never easy.

I am no hero. I say that often because it may come off as if I have great tales of danger and adventure to tell. As if they are badges to hold up on a podium. Nope. Not at all. Still, there were times when I felt that I might not live when I stayed in Atlanta, when I worked in Oakland, and when I was in West Africa. I’d been close to danger and at any given moment, it could’ve been part of those reports that we hear about on the news. I would marvel at the strength of some of my friends. I had new heros to look at, to observe, and to root for.

So, it’s crazy. On one hand, I’m all up in this culture. I’m reloading the web site called Engadget to see what new technologies that Apple computer is rolling out for us to consume. I’m thinking if I want to get a new music player (aka iPod), and I’m thinking about a way to get to Art School and a nice open space to paint more often. On the other hand, I have been in the other land. I have my own Boys of Baraka, people who have loved me and I have been able to love and be with. Children who go to violent schools. Broken schools. I spent time with a man who’d never been given an opportunity his whole life, so his work was mowing lawns. I spent my whole Saturday with him once and I came away feeling all of it: gasoline fumes in my lungs, grass bits all over my clothes, sweat, dirt and dust caked up on my body, and a sense of satisfaction from a full day’s work.

There’s one hand, and then there’s the other. The more I live, the more I learn that the two are so far apart, between the rich and the poor. Between those with opportunity and those who have no hope. Often times I’ve felt that I’ve had to turn my back on a lot of safe and practical things in order to step towards the fringes. I’m not sure about all of it, and in many ways, it’s really hard for me. I give up and I want to do and be with what fits: security and comfort in the middle and upper class. It is part of who I am, and where I seem to fit. On the other hand, I’ve found life to be beautiful and so hopeful on the other side. I feel called to a place where I don’t keep all of my posessions and talents to my own self, or to the access of only those who can afford to relate to me. It’s been a constant struggle for me in my conscious 20′s.

That last paragraph is kind of jumbled. I’d like to write more about the great tension I have between a call to less and a desire for more. And maybe it’s a fitting way to end because I’m tired and I said this would be short. What do you think? Or do you think at all about this stuff? I’d just like to know. Sometimes it gets lonely to think and write for the whole world to see without much (interesting) response.

Part 2 will be about Hardwood. (If you leave feedback… just kidding)

Good Night.