When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.
Lev 19:9-10


The faceless voices are all around us
The poor, needy, sick, the fatherless
We walk by with a look of disgust
Quietly thinking, "they've made their choices"
So their pain can't bother us

To rationalize, to vilify
To wash our hands, to close our eyes
To be silent on every evil we should decry
Allows the neglect, the pain to be normalized

Leave the edges of your field
For the poor, the widowed, the wanderer
But our excess is concealed
since they are squanderers

Our conscious must be clean
Or guilt might invade our rest
So, we leave nothing to be gleaned
and quietly whisper a justification, a rationalization, a lie
" I cannot freely give, since I know best"

Edit:
I'm working on the last verse and rewording it.  Can't decide which one to go with.

The faceless voices are all around us
The poor, needy, sick, the fatherless
We walk by with a look of disgust
Quietly thinking, "they've made their choices"
So their pain can't bother us

To rationalize, to vilify
To wash our hands, to close our eyes
To be silent on every evil we should decry
Allows the neglect, the pain to be normalized

Leave the edges of your field
For the poor, the widowed, the wanderer
But our excess is concealed
since they are squanderers

To give, they must be screened
since our riches are our own
so we leave nothing to be gleaned
and forget the bloody grace we've been shown

we have to justify our apathy
'they're unintelligent, they're delinquent'
so, we allow their bodies to atrophy
in the presence of suffering, we blink once

To avoid guilt we mutter
I cannot freely give
they would still be a drifter
if given a life to relive

as we lay down to rest
a statement without humility
'I know best'
To reassure our conscious's fragility.

do you know what it's like to lose?

lose something so fragile and dear?

i'm not pointing a finger to accuse 

so, please, let go of your fear

I lost a childhood

seventeen years

i struggled to find manhood

still searching for what i lost

so fragile and so dear

i tried so hard to get free

my hate and anger only drew me closer

with my bitterness i was becoming you

separate, but a haunted heart inside me

my soul fell a little lower

I see your misery

I see your loneliness 

you still ignore my every plea

and now it's my time to leave the abyss 

Speak the truth and say goodbye

that is all i can do

you are people of the lie

i don't hate you; i don't

I pray you find the light of something true

Regardless of theology

i hope this is something i'll witness:

a touch on the face speaking words of an apology 

on the wonderful distant shores

where there is no hate, no fear, and sickness. 

My City

Recently there has been a crime wave in my neighborhood.  Sadly this happens to some degree every holiday season because money for presents, travel, and family gatherings has to come from somewhere. So, crime increases.  What is different this year is the reaction I'm seeing from the people in my neighborhood.   There's a variety of responses, but almost all of them are pat answer to a complex pain.  The nature of the responses ranges from trying to increase security to wild racism.  The question, " what would jackson be like without black people?" is actually something that has been asked.  Most commonly, though, is the plan or talk to escape to the neighboring suburbs and just not deal with the problems in our community. We all want easy, simple, quiet solutions to pain.  Blame on one group of people, retreating deeper into your own home, and trying to leave completely are all over simplified answers that make us feel falsely empowered.  Reality is these completely avoid the issues of crime, hate, and pain.

The reality is there is no pat answer, no set up, no formula to solving pain; let alone solving a rise in crime.  Job was never given a reason on why he lost everything and was made to go from being as respected as a king to looked down upon while laying in the ashes of his former life.  The only response God gave was asking Job, " Do you know who I am?"  He simply reminded Job of who he was, never explaining why he allowed things to happen.  Pain makes us wrestle with the goodness of God, it makes us wrestle and find our own response to life, and it makes us look in the eyes of the people causing us pain and allows us to see the deepest parts of our own heart.  Perhaps we should, as a culture, take a look at how we have effected and created a lot of the cultural systems that are perpetuating our current problems.

I wish there was a reason I could hold up and say, " see! this is why I love Jackson and why we all should love Jackson."  Sadly, I can't find any reason to do that.  I love jackson, I love Mississippi, I love my neighborhood.  I know a dozen people who have been car jacked, I know a dozen houses that have been broken into, I've had a gun held to my head only a few miles from my house, but six years later I am still here.  In all honesty, I am not always sure why I am here when people asked me why I am still in Jackson.

What I do know is the city is very broken, very poor, and very needy.  I see a more honest view of myself when I look at the city than when I look at the mirror.  I am broken, I am needy, I need you to reach out to me and remind me I am a person.  I need you to be my neighbor and remind me that I am human every morning when I walk out my door.  I have a wonderful wife, wonderful friends and family closer than blood.  They became part of me when I was and still am at my weakest.  These wonderful people never handed me a few god bless you's, a meal, and some cash then left me to piece together the rest of my life with hands that were already tired.  They became my legs, they were my hands, they were my strength when I was almost lifelessly tired.

I am jackson.

Dear Mr.Christian, you claim salvation through God becoming you.  You have salvation because of God's incarnational ministry to you.  You killed Jesus while he was a man.  He became a man so you could know him better.  Jesus drew close to people who hated him, who beat him, who killed him.  Think about the implications of Jesus becoming one of the people who killed him.  Think of the implications of people becoming part of the community in south and west Jackson instead of leaving when pain or suffering becomes apparent?

Jesus moved from one world to another to reach you and me; leaving heaven and born into earth.  We refuse to move neighborhoods to reach someone desperate. When you flee from the sight of pain or darkness it doesn't leave.  No matter where you go or what you say everything still exists that existed before you left.  Perception and proximity doesn't change reality.  Leaving means you no longer have a voice in the direction the community is going in and one day the suburbs you live in are going to encounter to same problems.  The reality of human suffering is always one step behind us no matter how far and fast we run.  Sooner or later we all have to accept this and wrestle our own response to human suffering.  There's no need to agree with me.  I'm not here to persuade you to my side, but i am asking you to please no longer ignore this question and find your response.

Numb. That's how I feel
an absence of feeling
a lack of emotion that steals
a thief that takes what is real

Take a look at pain
stare into it's eyes
as i become weak
it leaves a mark; a stain

I want to scream
To ask, " why"
But please remember
" do you know who i am"

I created the earth
I always loved you
I planned you from birth
Rest, Know that is true.

It has been awhile since I've posted anything.  That's something I want to change.  I would like to keep up a regular blog again, since this helps keep my mind organized and keep a little more sanity.

I am in a very different stage of life than i was when i last blogged.  Since i was last keeping a regular blog/journal I was still in college, unmarried, and not working towards a career.  This is a very different stage of life now some two years and a few months later.  I am married, I've explored different career options, and am now working towards a specific goal in a career.  The list of struggles and even the general culture that is around you drastically changes as time goes on.  With different stages comes different communal and personal struggles.

I was going to write a longer post explaining the different struggle, but it came out as more of a prideful tone, which is not what i want to write or express.  Simply put, i'm noticing in this new stage of life people being more willing to check out of life relationally and sexually.  The line between one night stands and a porn addiction is very thin and commonly practiced.  It's sex without commitment, which doesn't allow intimacy.  It's a whole lot easier, sometimes it's more fun, but it doesn't practice the essence of sex; vulnerability and connection.  Mostly, i've been thinking about how while we think, and in a limited mindset, there isn't a cost to anyone else because of our sexual practices.  Reality is when sex is involved it always affects other people.  Particularly with porn.  Currently pop culture has been holding up the porn industry as something that is progressive and allowing people to take control of their sexuality and allows people to really be the on defining what your sexuality means.  On the other side of the arguments are people holding up people who say they are trapped, often times abused, run aways, broken families, and hurting. Regardless of what side of the argument you fall on, selling your sexuality to fulfill the fetish of a mass market isn't being in control of your sexuality, it's completely giving up control for a pay check.

Sex has changed me.  I have been in the deep side of addiction and I am now in a healthy marriage with a healthy sex life.  The hardest part of starting a healthy marriage based sexual relationship was becoming human again in sex. The idea of actually trusting someone completely with myself in sex was horrifying compared to a screen that did everything i wanted without interacting with me.  We're taught to take control of our sexuality rather than trust and mutually give to each other relationally.  Control and be protective of your sexuality and be safe, definitely, but learn how to practice vulnerability in the right places, learn to be completely unguarded with someone.  These are things i've never had a safe place to truly experience until I found my wife and she helped me rehumanize sex.

These are mostly rambles and this is becoming a long post again, but hopefully this is a more honest and less pride filled post than the first draft.  This whole post started because of a poem of sorts i was about to post.  So, here's what I originally intended to post.

The soft glow of a screen
Casting light on my body
clicking, looking, for my sexual cuisine
"She's young, hopefully legal" barely 18

I stare at her breast
I don't know her name
I watch her undress
and part of her i claim

One becomes one-hundred nameless faces
while i was clicking, searching for another high
i think i'll find love in these places
but this is were intimacy comes to die

I don't feel like a man
except when the screen is on
every time i leave i begin to plan
for the next time i'll feel like a man

This is my secret sin
this is my new reality
I isolate myself to see her again
and the rest of my life is a mere formality

Whenever i gaze into the screen
the offer is intimacy without commitment
the cost is my heart becomes a machine
and my soul flickers out of existence

Every night i convince myself actions are without consequence
At most i'm only harming myself
Slowly i quiet my mind
the part of my that knows this truth
Porn and victimization are synonymous

We all want to build
our little castles
and in some way be fulfilled

i wanted so much control
so i could beat my chest
and say i was whole
but my dream left me oppressed

when i met you i lost control
since i chose to bind myself to you
building a kingdom with you is my goal
since you've given me something true

i'm asking you to come with me
to participate, not just stand by
please come, i hope you'll agree
help me build our castle in the sky

To a girl who sat and listened
helped me while i cried
spoke peace to my condition
and helped me learn to confide

I was scared to speak
since i was taught not to
that it meant i was weak
but you said that wasn't true

then you listened
pulled me close
and let me rest
with emotions exposed

you made me feel safe
like i was home
i didn't want to leave your place
since it was peace on a tiresome day

thank you for listening my dear
thank you for helping me be strong
thank you for quieting my fears
and being with me on this journey all along.