My last post was filled with optimism (yes, even naive political optimism, by golly) but it's important - for better and for worse - to remember that we live in a time of extreme angst, sorrow, cynicism and darkness. People are lonely. The gap between the very poor and the very wealthy widens, and those in the middle are fewer and fewer.
I've been listening to a lot of Rufus Wainwright in the last few months, and his song Going to a Town off the Release the Stars (2007) album is beautiful, heartbreaking and fills me with the loneliness and frustration I see all around me.
I'm going to a town that has already been burned down
I'm going to a place that is already been disgraced
I'm gonna see some folks who have already been let down.
I'm so tired of America
I'm gonna make it up for all of the Sunday Times
I'm gonna make it up for all of the nursery rhymes
They never really seem to want to tell the truth
I'm so tired of you America
Making my own way home
Ain't gonna be alone
I got a life to lead America
I got a life to lead
Tell me do you really think you go to hell for having loved?
Tell me and not for thinking every thing that you've done is good
(I really need to know)
After soaking the body of Jesus Christ in blood I'm so tired of America
(I really need to know)
I may just never see you again or might as well
You took advantage of a world that loved you well
I'm going to a town that has already been burned down
Today's generations are starving for hope. I guess, so am I... yes, yes, yes: I have Jesus. I have hope. But I want to feel hope. I want to see reasons why I should. I want hope to grow, blossom and pollenate the places in me that are let down and disgraced.
Come, Holy Spirit...
please read more about my thoughts on the evolution of Christianity at http://www.emergingchristianity.blogspot.com/
Visit Me At...
Wednesday
A New Landscape...
Today Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News wrote a beautiful essay on the Clinton and Obama campaigns, on New Hampshire and the expectations and surprises there. This year I've found myself excited about America - for the first time since leaving the Republican Party six years ago (at age 23, a burned out, disillusioned ex-Alex P. Keaton).
The soaring speeches we're hearing in 2008's Democratic Primaries are moving me from cautious cynicism to genuine hope about our future, our freedom and the potential of the American people to do something good and redemptive in the world.
Williams' article is worth reading: HERE
Williams Writes, On Clinton...
Hillary Clinton was bloodied in New Hampshire. The people of New Hampshire saw it and didn't like it. They saw assumptions forming and didn't like them. Some felt they were being told what to think: the race was decided, Hillary was desperate and inauthentic. Worst of all — and this was made very clear to me by more than one person — when some in the media quietly doubted that Hillary Clinton's emotions at that roundtable were real (there was quiet snickering about an "acting job" born of an urgent need to seem normal) it was proof to them that cynicism had taken hold of the politics/media realm, and they simply refused to believe that.
And On Obama...
That day, I saw people embrace Obama the way people embrace loved ones returning from foreign battlefields. I saw people with small children, brought along simply so their parents could years later tell them, to the point of predictable annoyance, "You were there." Losing in New Hampshire may well make Obama a better candidate. While it's the kind of thing that is always said at times like these by those of us whose names have never appeared on a ballot, I think it might just be true in this case.
please read more about my thoughts on the evolution of Christianity at http://www.emergingchristianity.blogspot.com/
The soaring speeches we're hearing in 2008's Democratic Primaries are moving me from cautious cynicism to genuine hope about our future, our freedom and the potential of the American people to do something good and redemptive in the world.
Williams' article is worth reading: HERE
Williams Writes, On Clinton...
Hillary Clinton was bloodied in New Hampshire. The people of New Hampshire saw it and didn't like it. They saw assumptions forming and didn't like them. Some felt they were being told what to think: the race was decided, Hillary was desperate and inauthentic. Worst of all — and this was made very clear to me by more than one person — when some in the media quietly doubted that Hillary Clinton's emotions at that roundtable were real (there was quiet snickering about an "acting job" born of an urgent need to seem normal) it was proof to them that cynicism had taken hold of the politics/media realm, and they simply refused to believe that.
And On Obama...
That day, I saw people embrace Obama the way people embrace loved ones returning from foreign battlefields. I saw people with small children, brought along simply so their parents could years later tell them, to the point of predictable annoyance, "You were there." Losing in New Hampshire may well make Obama a better candidate. While it's the kind of thing that is always said at times like these by those of us whose names have never appeared on a ballot, I think it might just be true in this case.
please read more about my thoughts on the evolution of Christianity at http://www.emergingchristianity.blogspot.com/
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