In a dark, lamplit rainy street
you find it
As the song changes and the pulse softens
The words to a tune you never really liked
You were made to more than just survive.
Does it ever drive you crazy, just how fast the night
changes?
And you remember a too-hot day with sun
baking a dirt road to chalk and children with one outfit of clothes
you find it
As the song changes and the pulse softens
The words to a tune you never really liked
You were made to more than just survive.
Does it ever drive you crazy, just how fast the night
changes?
And you remember a too-hot day with sun
baking a dirt road to chalk and children with one outfit of clothes
chasing after your van for a soccer ball
a smile
your laugh as they try to pronounce something in English
And you remember that children are children
No matter where they were born
But they become different people
Can never become a certain person
Because of it
The sun they see setting will fall that way too often
The day they feel starting will always come too soon
Too much to do
Or nothing to wait for
You have no idea what your life is worth
What God intended
Until you meet someone who is actually poor
Poverty is not my style.
That's what I thought after four days of dirty showers
No. It's mine.
I used to think the worst sort of poverty
was a broken spirit
The kind of starving that comes when you've had
no affirmation or comfort to eat
The pain in your neck from looking down
How a screen numbs your confidence
The dull in your heart from never looking up
When your emotions are as raw as steel and your daily life a meaningless drum
A rat race, a goose chase
Hamster wheels and a mouse maze
Wondering who moved your cheese and
trying to figure out how to be a seven-fold effective person,
praying for traits instead of grace
and proof of God instead of faith.
I used to think wealth brought out the hungry, thirsty and the poor in Spirit
souls sipped away as their iphone charges and chunks of their heart
fed to the dogs like pearls to the swine
with every immodest post
Privilege is not always a blessing.
It is a mask.
No one knows who you are
and you never know any one but yourself
The truth is kept from you
You are different, you are special, that is why you have more.
They are giver, we are taker, end of story. Shut the door.
I saw it in her as she hung on to the handle and she looked at me, a girl I never knew
and hadn't seen before,
Me recuerdes, and she stood around, just looking at my shoes.
Hiding the right color skin on the right size of feet, the right nationality, the right age, the right weight.
In the world where things are supposed to happen for you.
She was awkward and had bad timing because she'd never learned that from TV.
Not like us, who go home to a self-fulfilling script of what life should be,
You don't have to worry about meals or who is your family.
You don't have to worry about what will keep you down.
My parents had me here, in that hospital, to that doctor, in that town, with that color of birth certificate and under this code of laws, in a place where this battle and that general killed each other to get their way and the other guy lost.
Why should that mean that I can go to the grocery store, and she can't.
Why should it mean that I descend the mountain, stumble through clouds of getting high off our egos
To look where life is growing, in the dirt and in the mess,
Where people actually laugh without irony and fall in love and don't worry about where their life is going
Because their life is here, right now, and they don't know how much they have left.
What if the reason doors open for us is because they're closed on them.
What if the reason we have so much is because it was stolen.
What if the reason we covet and hoard is we know it doesn't belong to us.
And when she asked me, Me recuerdes,
it was her great love for me,
That she should have a recordless life,
while I get to achieve.
As long as I remember her.
But I never found out her name.
I don't think I'll ever be happy again after knowing what I stole.
When I wasn't looking.
Before I was born.
The shining whiteness of the airport looked like marble when we got home
The relief of touching ground in the nation I'd always known
They say He wrecks your heart, ruins your life, ruins everything
Do you ever recognize anything after you see people living like that?
Sterile walls and clean uniforms, stitches perfect and every glass surface gleaming,
instead of a nest, a hovel, a ditch, a gutter.
I can tell you where He lives and it is not in the mirage of perfect, the mandatory trainings and the hardened hearts.
It is in a face dried by the ocean after washing your mouth with tears.
When we look upon the bloodied feet of Jesus next week, I hope we see Him in this way and know we can never be at rest until He says we've paid Him what we owe.
a smile
your laugh as they try to pronounce something in English
And you remember that children are children
No matter where they were born
But they become different people
Can never become a certain person
Because of it
The sun they see setting will fall that way too often
The day they feel starting will always come too soon
Too much to do
Or nothing to wait for
You have no idea what your life is worth
What God intended
Until you meet someone who is actually poor
Poverty is not my style.
That's what I thought after four days of dirty showers
No. It's mine.
I used to think the worst sort of poverty
was a broken spirit
The kind of starving that comes when you've had
no affirmation or comfort to eat
The pain in your neck from looking down
How a screen numbs your confidence
The dull in your heart from never looking up
When your emotions are as raw as steel and your daily life a meaningless drum
A rat race, a goose chase
Hamster wheels and a mouse maze
Wondering who moved your cheese and
trying to figure out how to be a seven-fold effective person,
praying for traits instead of grace
and proof of God instead of faith.
I used to think wealth brought out the hungry, thirsty and the poor in Spirit
souls sipped away as their iphone charges and chunks of their heart
fed to the dogs like pearls to the swine
with every immodest post
Privilege is not always a blessing.
It is a mask.
No one knows who you are
and you never know any one but yourself
The truth is kept from you
You are different, you are special, that is why you have more.
They are giver, we are taker, end of story. Shut the door.
I saw it in her as she hung on to the handle and she looked at me, a girl I never knew
and hadn't seen before,
Me recuerdes, and she stood around, just looking at my shoes.
Hiding the right color skin on the right size of feet, the right nationality, the right age, the right weight.
In the world where things are supposed to happen for you.
She was awkward and had bad timing because she'd never learned that from TV.
Not like us, who go home to a self-fulfilling script of what life should be,
You don't have to worry about meals or who is your family.
You don't have to worry about what will keep you down.
My parents had me here, in that hospital, to that doctor, in that town, with that color of birth certificate and under this code of laws, in a place where this battle and that general killed each other to get their way and the other guy lost.
Why should that mean that I can go to the grocery store, and she can't.
Why should it mean that I descend the mountain, stumble through clouds of getting high off our egos
To look where life is growing, in the dirt and in the mess,
Where people actually laugh without irony and fall in love and don't worry about where their life is going
Because their life is here, right now, and they don't know how much they have left.
What if the reason doors open for us is because they're closed on them.
What if the reason we have so much is because it was stolen.
What if the reason we covet and hoard is we know it doesn't belong to us.
And when she asked me, Me recuerdes,
it was her great love for me,
That she should have a recordless life,
while I get to achieve.
As long as I remember her.
But I never found out her name.
I don't think I'll ever be happy again after knowing what I stole.
When I wasn't looking.
Before I was born.
The shining whiteness of the airport looked like marble when we got home
The relief of touching ground in the nation I'd always known
They say He wrecks your heart, ruins your life, ruins everything
Do you ever recognize anything after you see people living like that?
Sterile walls and clean uniforms, stitches perfect and every glass surface gleaming,
instead of a nest, a hovel, a ditch, a gutter.
I can tell you where He lives and it is not in the mirage of perfect, the mandatory trainings and the hardened hearts.
It is in a face dried by the ocean after washing your mouth with tears.
When we look upon the bloodied feet of Jesus next week, I hope we see Him in this way and know we can never be at rest until He says we've paid Him what we owe.