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Monday, June 20, 2011

Getting Whiter?

Getting Whiter?

This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Polonius in Hamlet Act 1, scene 3, 78–82

At the apartment that I am staying in here in Rome, there are several books on the bookshelf. One of them happens to be the book by Christian Lander, “Stuff White People Like”. It was a NY Times Bestseller and it is pretty funny. It started out as a blog with a list of stuff white people like and poked fun at the white culture. As I sat there and read through the list of stuff, I started to get alarmed because it seemed as though I liked a lot of the same stuff. I started to wonder how white I actually am. I mean stuff like Hummus, The Wire, and Asian Fusion food was on the list and I started to get alarmed. Then it got to stuff like Barak Obama, Hardwood Floors, and Brunch and I was like, whoa! Wait a minute. So decided to take the quiz in the back to find out just how white I am. Turns out I am 20% white according to the scale. Not too bad I guess. But it did get me to thinking about the social challenges of being an educated African-American in today's culture. There is a certain tension that exists between attempting to progress in society and maintaining cultural identity.

At first it was kind of funny. People would say stuff to me all the time about how I was a “special” kind of black person. In all fairness, I grew up in the “hood” but went to diverse schools. I learned how to have friends of multiple races and even got introduced to things that I wouldn’t have if I had all black friends. And it seemed to be the right thing to do. Why should we ever limit ourselves to experiencing one culture. I know the names of things that apparently some black people don’t. I use words to describe things that some people have asked me to define. I like learning about history and going to museums. I’ve studied abroad. I like hummus. I watch Cougar Town, and like it. I like irony. I don’t watch much TV and prefer to read. I like having conversations with other intelligent people. I like eating outside. I have a sort of “preppy” style about me. I even like some country music. But does any of that take away from my “blackness”? Most of my friends are black, but many may argue that they are like me. Most of us went to college. Most of us have interacted at some level with races other than black consistently. Most of us enjoy some of the same things.

It has seemed to get worse as I have gone further and further in my education. It seems to get even worse when you combine education and financial advancement. And here is the tension. As we advance in our educational and economic pursuits do we run the risk of alienating ourselves from our culture? And how much of it is our own fault for seeing our people in a negative light? Do we as educated African American men and women cause an intentional or unintentional rift between those of us with formal education and those without? The gap seems to get wider and wider. Furthermore, how do we hold onto a cultural identity in a world where our culture does not dominate? What does it mean to be an educated African-American today?

I see many dangers in this discussion. But nonetheless, I think it is a discussion worth having. I saw that after the “Stuff White People Like” book came out, there were responses by educated African Americans showing the stuff “we” like. There is a certain level of truth to some of it, but it seemed like the discussion stopped. I think it should continue. I think that I do have a responsibility as an educated African American woman to bring the valuable elements of my culture with me wherever I go. I think that I also have a responsibility to become as successful as God allows and never to let the worry of losing my heritage get in my way. My history as an African-American didn’t begin with slavery or being oppressed. There was a time before. If being exposed to and adopting the things that are a part of white culture come automatically with advancement, then we have to also become aware of what we are bringing to the table. There is such richness in our history as African-Americans that we must be mindful not to discard it in favor of majority opinion. At the same time, we must not also simply cling to the things that are stereotypical and are based on socio-economic status alone. But I am talking about the true things that we bring to the American culture. The community consciousness; our intellect; the strength of our families; the beauty of our artistic expression; our holistic spirituality and so much more.

The more we focus on getting away from some of what makes us African-American, the further we actually get away from uniting as a people. But we have to unite under the truth. Not only the things that makes people tell you that you “keep it real”. I mean the things that would be true if you were rich or poor. I think that what we would find if we parse out the economics of the story is that we are probably not that different. What was life like in Africa before institutionalized slavery in the Americas? Before we had to make due with what we were given? Maybe what we would find is that an increase in our financial condition or education as a people does not make us "whiter", but makes us "blacker" in some ways. Maybe it gets us closer to being what we were before we were slaves. Maybe that actually gets us closer to the truth of who we are as opposed to adopting a culture that is not our own. And maybe we can stop teaching our children that to speak properly in their native language of English is the equivalent of “talking white”. Maybe we can show them that to excel in life is not a “white thing” but is the expectation of a people who had the capacity to create the pyramids. And maybe we can stop trying to be something we are not and just be who we are. I don’t think I have to really worry about not being black. I can’t help it. There is stuff in me that makes me "black" that I can’t even control. But I don’t also have to be ashamed of learning something new and adopting it into my “blackness” either. In any event, I just wanted to put that out there because we seem to have a need to keep this on the table of discussion.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

The Rhythm of Life

The Rhythm of Life

“By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.” Genesis 2:2

Life naturally has a certain rhythm. A dance, if you will, that if you can catch, makes life enjoyable. It makes life worth living because we become naturally in tuned to the way God intended for life to be lived. I think for many of us, we are out of step with what God intended. I am especially talking about us, Americans.

Traveling in European countries I am always reminded of how exhausting it can be to be American. We work like nobody’s business. We live to work and make money and do it at the expense of our health at times. But here, in Italy, there is a little something that they practice that we may know as a siesta. Italians don’t call it that. It is actually a Spanish term meaning the sixth hour, where everybody takes a midday break. They usually eat with their family and/or friends, then take a nap. Government workers work from 8am to 2pm. Store owners close down their shop during the middle of the day and reopen at a later time in the evening. So if you need to make a store run at 2pm, you better make sure they are going to be around. I made that mistake on day 1 in Rome. I totally forgot that Italians follow the rhythm of life.

When we worship God, the Creator, we relate that to the first two chapters of Genesis where we review how God created the earth and heavens in six days and rested on the seventh. One thing that I think we overlook is the part about the rest on the seventh. For many people, this is simply a reason to not go to their offices or open their stores on Sunday, or even to declare Sunday as the designated day to worship, the Creator. But the seventh day didn’t exist until God created it. And it only existed for the purpose of rest. That was why it was created. Rest is a part of creation. Rest is a part of our rhythm of life. It’s not to be simply observed on a particular day (since there is no reason to assume that creation had to occur in a literal seven days). But rest is a part of creation as a whole.

Part of the reason that Europeans, in particular, observe the siesta is because of the practicality of it. It gets hot during the midday hours and it is hard to work and to concentrate on anything really important. They know better than to keep pushing beyond what your body will let you. They know how to follow a rhythm. They take a break and spend that time doing what we all may do naturally around that time. We Americans may call it a “2:30 feeling”, but maybe that should not be met with a surge of an energy drink but a pause to seek the creator on what activity, if any we should pursue. Too bad your supervisor or CEO didn’t get that memo, but some companies are catching on. After a while, we need to take a break or we will burnout. Money is not that important that you need to kill yourself to get it. And if you are a person who is out of rhythm, picture a person on the dance floor of life off beat. That’s you. Breaking it down on a slow song. McHammering to a Jazz tune. Slow down! There is plenty of time to make money. But you might not get there if you don’t learn how to get in step with creation.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Your Gift Makes Room

Using Your Gifts

“A gift opens the way for the giver and ushers him into the presence of the great.” - Proverbs 18:16 NIV

Ok. So I have been in Rome, Italy for the past week and I am due to be here for another three weeks. How, you ask? The short answer is God. The longer answer is that a gift I was given, I used for His glory and it made room for me to get here. Let me explain.
The above proverb is often quoted but I would say rarely understood. Partially because I think we overlook the gifts that God has given us. Or we do not attribute the things that we have as actual gifts. By definition, a gift does not come from yourself. It comes from somewhere else, or from someone else. According to Webster, there are three definitions for the noun gift of which I have chose two for the purposes of this discussion:

1 : a notable capacity, talent, or endowment

2 : something voluntarily transferred by one person to another without compensation

A gift that you have is something you didn’t have to pay for and makes you notable. The good news is that we all have gifts. The bad news is that we don’t all use them. Several people have contributed to the funding of my trip to Rome. I didn’t pay for it. I couldn’t. I didn’t have the money. Most of you know that I left my job last year to start a business and attend school full time. That didn’t exactly equate to me having enough money to leave the states for a month to lounge in a foreign country and “Eat, Pray, Love” till my heart was content. That’s not what got me here. Obedience got me here. Obedience is a gift. I have the capacity to obey God.
A while ago, God told me to do something that I would have never thought to do and frankly didn’t really want to do, but knowing that God always has something in mind that I cannot see, I yielded and did it anyway. Turns out, it was an enormous blessing to the person and years later, a blessing to me in the form of the longest vacation I have ever taken. How bout that? But I cannot take credit for it. I’m not that nice. I’m just obedient. And even that is a gift. That person paid for my trip, voluntarily. It was another gift. So now I can use that gift to get exposed to people that I would have never had an opportunity to interact with, had it not been for the initial use of my initial gift. And had I not been obedient and left my job last year, I probably wouldn’t have had the time to be able to leave for a month. The way God made me has a place in me becoming the woman He created me to become. Your gift makes room for you and makes room for God to use you in ways you couldn't imagine. He is the initial giver and you give again when you use what He gives you.
I’m sure we can all think back to series of events that have occurred in our lives that came from one simple use of some gift that we have been given. Maybe everyone is not gifted to sing or dance or play ball, but we are all gifted with something. Even things that we overlook, like obedience. Some people are actually gifted in the opposite way. Those are the rebels. Even their rebellion has a place. I’m not a gifted rebel. I don’t do well bucking the system. I know my place. Every time I tried to do something rebellious, I got stopped dead in my tracks. Rebellion is not my gift. But I know people who are gifted in rebellion. Many of them are the catalysts for change. Malcolm X was a rebel. Harriet Tubman was a rebel. Rosa Parks was a rebel. Jonah was a rebel. That’s a gift. Maybe it will make you think differently about how we see the troublemakers of our day. Maybe they just don’t know how to use their gifts constructively.
But if we don’t look at our lives in totality, then we can miss the opportunities God is giving us everyday to use our gifts. And we can also miss opportunities to help others channel their gifts in constructive ways. We call people “goody two shoes” for being obedient, but maybe they are made that way for a reason. We call people troublemakers because they challenge authority, but maybe they are gifted to change the system that others obey blindly. We need both type of people. My obedience to God helped someone else in their time of need, and continues to bless others. Others rebellion can spark the change we need to revamp systems and traditions that no longer work. Maybe someone else is gifted in organization, but we call them anal. Maybe someone is gifted is functioning in chaos and are incredibly artistic. If we can all learn to see our little quirks as gifts from God, maybe we would use them more. Maybe those gifts would make room for us to be free in our lives in a way that we don’t yet realize. Maybe that freedom helps to free someone else. In any case, use what you’ve got all the time. You never know where it will lead.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Exceedingly Abundantly Above

Exceedingly Abundantly Above

“Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” Ephesians 3:20 NIV

I have had a chance to reflect while being on this vacation and I realized that God has a clear pattern in my life that I often forget about. He always puts me in places I don’t qualify to be. Whenever I just relax and let God drive, He leads me into places that I could never have bought, fought, learned or talked my way into. He truly has done exceedingly and abundantly more than I can ask or imagine. But in order to get to the place where I could participate in this, I needed to let go of the reigns. That is the difficult part.

It always seems to make more sense to build up an impressive resume and then go for the job you want after you qualify for it. It seems presumptuous and even premature to go after something that you don’t qualify for and expect a favorable result. But when I look at my life, all of the things that I have done of any notoriety at all, have functioned out of this “God-principal” of believing what He said I am, and trusting that I could do what He said I could, before I actually qualified to do it. It was after I took the step of faith that my resume was built. But before I went, I never qualified. I have to always be willing to go, even when I don’t think I can do it.

The hard part in that is having the faith and confidence to go through the open door to a place where God is leading. Most of us only look at our past experiences and function based on what that has the power to get for us. But God will stretch you. And you often know that it is God that is stretching you when you start the conversation with, “oh I don’t qualify to do that.” But you actually want to do it. You can taste it. You can feel it. But it takes faith to actually go forward.

And when you do move in faith, you see that doors are opened that never would have been opened before. You could do things that you didn’t even think were possible. You start to notice God’s resume in your life instead of your own. And the more you learn to let God build a resume in your life, the more you experience the life He called you to live. If we are good people, you know, morally upright, people who just want a good life for ourselves, we can probably get it through very traditional means. Go get a good education, get a good job, marry a good spouse, raise good kids, volunteer for good causes, do good deeds, treat people with respect, retire to a good lifestyle, etc. We can play it safe in life and let our own experience be our guides. But it doesn’t take a bunch of faith to do that. Playing it safe all the time is not the presence of faith, but the presence of fear. When do you take a chance to go after something that only God can get you? When do you look something dead in the face that is taunting you because it knows that you don’t personally have what it takes to conquer it?

In the bible, David didn’t qualify to beat Goliath, but he did. Jesus didn’t qualify to be the expected king of Israel, but he was. Maybe God is calling you to step out on faith into something that makes no sense. Maybe your resume doesn’t support the endeavor. But are you going to let your lack of experience stop you from experiencing God? Not only do you have a resume, but God has a resume in your life. Think back on the things that God has done in your life and the things that have happened that He has lead you towards. What does that resume look like? Is the result more than you could have ever imagined? Mine definitely is more than I could have qualified to get done. And I don’t intend to stop now. If this is what God has called me to do, then in obedience, I will go. Whatever it is. It rarely makes sense. I usually start the conversation with, “How are you gonna do that God? I don’t have the . . . (fill in the blank)”. And that is my cue. That’s why it’s faith. You have no clue, but trust that God does.

The impressive portions of my resume (at least in my mind) have more to do with the risk I was willing to take to get there more than the accomplishment itself. People seemed to be impressed by certain things I have or have done, but the truth is it wasn’t me at all. I actually didn’t qualify for it. Everything from my car to my house, my career, my current vacation. None of it do I actually deserve on my own merit. I can think back all the way to my formative years when I was skipped in the first grade and didn’t qualify to be in with the second graders according to my age. I can’t say that I knew what God was doing or that I was even aware of the presence of God in my life in an active way. But the good news for us is that it has little to do with how much you know God, but how much He knows you. And when you do come to a point of deeper and intimate knowledge of Him, you can stop trying to build up your own resume and let your resume be built by God. The results of it will be more than you could have ever imagined. More than you could possibly do on your own.