Ooohs and Aaahs

iPhone 4 or 4S?

You know those moments in life when you experience an event so spectacular, you just can't find the words to describe it? When you witness a spectacle that causes a sort of amnesia and you forget all of your previous experiences? Your memory is wiped clean and you're ready to proclaim what you just witnessed as the best (fill in the blank) of all time?

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow your roll.

Thanks Pinterest!

I think we live in a world where this happens more times than we'd like to admit. When the newest, shiniest toy is released, we just have to have it. (Apple is the maestro at capitalizing on this.) When a certain celebrity wears certain layers with certain colors, women rush out to Anthropologie to try to match it. (You can keep telling yourself that it's your own style because they're slightly different colors. I ain't mad at cha.)

When Blake Griffin dunks on Kendrick Perkins so ferociously, we're quick to announce we've seen one of the best dunks of all time. (Really, there have been better dunks on that same basket, but I digress.) These are all part of the ooohs and aaahs of life that come and go so quickly. I admit, I get caught up in them as well. I've learned to ease up on the hyperbole over the years. The more times I say "best ever", the less meaning those words hold.

I don't want to be all about the ooohs and aaahs. I need perspective in my life about what really matters. To me, people matter. Each and every life has value. I need to be constantly reminded of this because it is difficult to see the value in the things that don't invoke the ooohs and aaahs. On the flip side, your value is not contingent on how many ooohs and aaahs you generate. Let's start to care more about what really matters. Liberate in love. By loving people, you can free people and you can be truly free. With or without the ooohs and aaahs.

Keeping It Real

Back in the late 80's, while other kids were listening to NKOTB, I was geeking on De la Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising, the first CD I ever bought. My love for hip-hop grew from there and I even tried my hand at DJing in high school. I made mixed tapes (actual cassette tapes!), DJ'd small house parties and even lunch time in the quad at good ole West High. I thought maybe I could make some money doing this DJ thing but I quickly found out that the money I thought I was making just went back into buying records, tapes and maintaining the Technics 1200's. I had mad love for it but I had no dough to back it up. Immersing myself into the culture of hip-hop, I quickly found myself holding onto some of the ideals of the culture as defining points in my life.

"Keeping it real" was a phrase widely used in the 90's. It means being true to yourself and your values. It also means being true to values that others find respectable. While the notion to remain authentic is a noble one, it was used far too many times as an excuse to be ignorant. This was hilariously portrayed in a bit from The Dave Chappelle Show called "When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong".

Even though the phrase was misused numerous times, there were some instances where the conviction to keep it real was used in a compelling and inspiring way. One song that stuck with me through the years is O.C.'s "Time's Up". O.C. rapped about taking the art of being an MC to another level by using more intellect and higher concepts. Here are the lyrics that I can recite to this day:

See I know yo, slow your roll, give a good to go

Guys be lackin in this thing called rappin just for dough

Of course we gotta pay rent, so money connects, but uhh

I'd rather be broke and have a whole lot of respect

It's the principle of it, I get a rush when I bust

some dope lines oral, that maybe somebody'll quote

That's what I consider real, in this field of music

Instead of puttin brain cells to work they abuse it

Non-conceptual, non-exceptional

Everybody's either crime-related or sexual

I'm here to make a difference, besides all the riffin

The traps are not stickin, rappers stop flippin

For those who pose lyrical but really ain't true I feel

"Their time's limited, hard rocks too"

O.C. probably didn't write these words dreaming that one day, I would quote them. But he did dream of inspiring people to find something to do that they love and warned against doing things just for the money and the accolades. He wanted people to rise above the fake meaning of "keeping it real".

This is something that I've always struggled with. In my attempt to keep it real, I've done the opposite and put up a facade. Saying things like, "Everything's fine" and "I'm all right" are really just excuses to not deal with what's really going on with me. To quote Donald Miller, one of my favorite authors, from one of my favorite books, Blue Like Jazz,


"'I feel like I'm a fake person. I say what I need to say, do what I need to do, but I don't mean it.'"


He said this is how he felt when he was ministering to college students and he started to feel like he was going through the motions. He took some time off, got away from everything and just spent time with God, under the stars and had a real, sincere talk. This brought him back to the realization of the realness of God. He went beyond knowing that God loved him, he felt it. I need to be reminded of that same thing. I need to keep it real with God. I need to keep it real with people. Because when I pose lyrical, I really ain't true, I feel that my time's limited, hard rocks, too.

Hope That Rises

You probably have seen a spoken word piece making its way around the interwebs called, "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus". It has sparked a huge debate and has left some people confused about its message. You can read a lot of it just in the comments section of the YouTube page. I'll save the conversation about the artist's content for another time. Instead, I wanted to focus on the art form. While the video is well done, I've seen better spoken word performances. Here's where I'd like to share about an artist who passed away last year, David Blair.

Lenny and Carl from The Simpsons

One particular piece that moved me called, "My Name is Carl", is a beautifully told story about Carl from The Simpsons. In the piece, Blair shares the story from a first person point of view, through the eyes of Carl. It helps to know a little bit about the characters of The Simpsons but even if you know nothing at all, the story and the delivery is captivating. As Blair put it, "Here it is in Technicolor."



I love that I could feel the emotion through the performance. He shared a piece of his soul through the story. Reading Blair's remembrance page, Metro Times journalist Melissa Giannini described his work as "hope that rises from the ashes of despair." I think that's what this story embodies. There will always be hope where we make ourselves visible to others just as Lenny stood up for Carl. I hope that I would have the same kind of courage, to be able to rise to the occasion and make myself visible to those in need.

Never Beyond: My Own Reflection

Image from the POTSC blog entry titled, "More Than Your Mistakes".

I love when stars and planets align, when seemingly unrelated events connect in a way to enhance what is being spoken into life. Such a thing occurred these past few days with my own reflection of 2011, an exercise we went through just today for our college group at church (shout out to SWAG!) and the latest addition to People of the Second Chance's "Never Beyond" poster series (see image above). The beginning of a new year offers the opportunity to process and sort through the obstacles that can keep us from realizing our infinite potential.

Saving my reflection for the wrap up, I'll start with the exercise. Our guest leader, Taryn, passed out compacts to the students (amused and glad to see the boys treat the compacts as totally foreign objects) and had them write character traits that annoy them onto the mirrors. The exercise was meant to encourage the students to reflect on why these traits annoy them and to assess whether or not they see the traits in themselves. Some of the traits that came to my mind were closed mindedness, lack of courtesy and being easily defeated. While I didn't necessarily see these traits in myself, I know I work at trying to fight them off. I attributed the negative feelings to past hurts. Whether experiencing them first hand or witnessing these traits inflicting pain on others, it is the pain that leaves emotional scarring. The scars ensure the pain will not be easily forgotten.

Staying with the exercise of looking at myself in the mirror, the latest "Never Beyond" post from POTSC offered this:

"Take a look at that mirror and ask yourself: Was 2011 a year of regret?  Of doubt, fear, guilt, and non-forgiveness?  Has it gone even farther back that that?  If so, then it’s time to look in that mirror again and ask yourself a different question: ”Who would you give a second chance?”"

Sometimes the person most in need of a second chance is the person in the mirror.

" Let 2012 be the year you give yourself permission to take that second chance."

My hope for 2012 was addressed in my previous blog entry, "More Than Conquerers". In it I said that if 2011 was about winning, then let's make 2012 about restoring. An addendum to that I'd like to make is that we should also look to be restored in our mission to restore. As we look to build and rebuild relationships, families and communities, we should also take time to find restoration for ourselves. After all, isn't restoration what second chances are all about?

"You are a person of infinite potential.  You are a person of a fresh start.  You are People of the Second Chance."

More Than Conquerers

At our Jr. High church group way back in the early 90's, (dang, that sounds old) we sang a melancholy song with these lyrics:

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall tribulation or distress, shall persecution, famine or nakedness...
Neither peril or sword
From the love of the Lord."

Tribulation? Famine? Nakedness? (I always snickered when we got to that part of the line.) Those are uncommon words to your run of the mill 12 year old. I guess it was the unusualness of the song that stuck with me all of these years. Now, as a 32 year old (yup, old age confirmed) I can fully appreciate these words written by the apostle Paul.

Going into the Bible and reading the passage from which the song lyrics originated, I found that it is a remarkable commitment made by God through Jesus. It speaks of His everlasting love for us and that there is absolutely nothing that can separate us from that. And if that is the kind of commitment He makes to us, I believe we should, in turn, make that kind of commitment to others.

"Who shall separate us?" - Let's start off the new year, 2012, by simply being there for one another. Through tribulations, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword, anything that is thrown at us, let's stick together. It's not going to be easy. If there's one certainty, it is that it will be a struggle. It will take a huge amount of grace. But in the end, it will build us as a people. The scripture goes on to say, in all these things, we are more than conquerers. Conquering is simply winning the battle. We are more than that. We are here to make the world better than how it was when we got here. That would make us restorers.

If 2011 was about winning, let's make 2012 about restoring. Let's do it together.