Category Archives: Writing to God

Unknown's avatar

I Think I Want to Waste My Senior Year

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In 24 hours, my college town will double in size. Every year close to 30,000 people come out for a Halloween block party. 30,000 twenty-somethings take over the main drag of Athens. The city shuts the street down. People wander in and out of the dozen bars on the street and bands are booked for different alleyways. It’s a great time.

Except last year, there were 50 arrests.

The year before that, there were 78 arrests.

I don’t think anyone comes here expecting to get arrested. Probably, the vast majority of these people are good kids in the wrong place.

But, I have an issue. We have created a world in which the end all of “blowing off steam” is participating in a party that is rife with illegal activity.

***

In 24 hours, religious zealots will descend on my liberal college town to stand in the middle of a block party to hold signs reminding people of hell. They will tell the costumed college students that fornication and drunkenness end in death.

I don’t think these zealots are hateful people. I just don’t think they’ve ever interacted honestly with a costumed college student.

And many costumed college students will come to the conclusion that God has nothing to offer them but death and punishment.

And all of this sucks.

***

Fifty miles away, in the heart of rural southeastern Ohio, is a 10th grader working on his homework. He is in a special education program. He loves to read. In fact, he has read the book his class is currently reading four times already. When asked about the book, he gets excited and can talk about it for near half an hour. Most of that half hour is summary, but it’s the most detailed summary you have ever heard.

On Monday, he will go to a school where teachers will applaud him for that rambling summary, believing that to be the precipice of his academic achievement. Meanwhile, the “normal” 10th graders will be asked to analyze symbolism and figurative language in poetry. None of this higher level thinking will ever be asked of our student in the special education classroom even though he obviously has the capacity to connect to a text in a profound way (since he has read a book four times).

***

A costumed college student at the OU Halloween party will be arrested. She will call her parents in the morning. After the initial shock and anger of their daughter being arrested, conversations will happen about why she engaged in the behavior that led to the arrest. She will site stress or peer pressure.

She might go to therapy for a while. When she is finally able to see herself as a “good kid” again, she will leave therapy. She will go back to hanging out with her old group of friends. She won’t get arrested again. But her grades will suffer. No more Bs; Cs and Ds now. She will graduate, won’t be able to find a job, and will move back in with her parents.

She will spend months, years complaining about information overload or “how busy she is.”

***

I am tired of having to hear about the costumed college student while the book-loving 10th grader is struggling.

My generation is wasting our time. We are wasting our time with “inspirational” blog posts and with quotes with cool pictures on Tumblr and with inventing things to complain about. There is plenty to complain about. When drunk drivers kill innocent people, for instance. Or when bullying and “slut”-shaming leads to suicide.

Or when half the country isn’t getting a quality education.

Or when your country uses drones to kill people from other countries.

Or when 20% of women report being sexually assaulted at some point.

But, instead, my privileged middle class peers and I choose to spend our time talking about how Facebook poking is cramping our dating game. Or how corrupt and evil everything is except our three closest friends. Or “blowing off steam.”

I have been told more times than I can count that I need to enjoy my senior year. Why? Why is that so important? I appreciate the sentiment, but with all due respect, I am only here because I had the privilege of growing up in a family that valued education and because I went to a public school that expected I end up here and because I am hardly paying a dime for my schooling.

And what is this enjoyment anyway? Does it really require that I go to a block party that was invented so that my peers could perform illegal activities without consequences? Does it require that I go to a small bar with my close friends and toss back a cold one?

Or can I, like, fix things? Would that be okay? Like, if I took all of that energy I put into trying to figure out how to make myself happy and spent it on figuring out how to save lives? Or would that be a waste of my senior year?

Unknown's avatar

So Eden Sank To Grief

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I have an odd fascination with things like sand castles and ice sculptures
I assume it’s because I usually find myself dedicating time to things that will only last a few moments
I guess that’s why I fall in love with things that will never love me back

-Ruby Francisco, My Honest Poem

I want to write about religion, but I’m not very good at that so I’m going to write about poetry instead.

I like poetry. Some of you invariably do, too. I used to write a blog of poetry. It existed here. Then I got rid of all the poetry and started this blog. People liked the poetry, but it was nowhere near as popular as this. People would tell me my writing was beautiful or that they respected my words. No one was ever inspired.

I think most people, if forced to choose between Fifty Shades of Grey, The Hunger Games, and The Collected Works of John Donne would pick the first two every time (I might, too!). Unlike some, I don’t think this reflects a spiritual decline in society. I think poetry must answer for this lack of interest.

First, there is a growing amount of bad poetry. Back in John Donne’s day, it was difficult to publish poetry. There weren’t a lot of presses, and even if you were a great writer, you probably spent a couple of years just circulating your stuff around family and friends. And if you were a woman like Mary Wroth (I call her the 17th century Nicki Minaj), you spent many years circulating your stuff. Then, maybe, after you died, someone would get it in his head (usually this was a male thing) to publish your work in a folio together. Obviously, you wouldn’t start this long arduous process if you hadn’t practiced and studied your craft and knew what you were doing.

That’s not how it works today. Today, anyone can start a blog. Bad poetry gets published all the time. If you want a physical book, you can self-publish. It costs nothing to publish an e-book. Bad poetry is everywhere. The noise is loud. We turn to novels and movies and television shows because even if they are poorly written, at least they have a driving plot. Poetry usually doesn’t. It depends on its words.

Second, poetry is meant to be acutely relevant. Sure, the poets of olde wrote lofty poems inspired by women or intense epics meant to excite (although, I would argue that epics are still alive and well in the form of novels and movies). But, many of the poems from long ago that we still study today were written in response to a current event, a friend’s death, a wife’s passing or leaving.

I don’t think we know how to write relevant poetry anymore. The 24-hour news cycle is partly to blame here (although, what can’t we blame on the 24-hour news cycle). It’s difficult to take the necessary amount of time writing about an event when it’s just going to be dusted away in a couple of days anyway. Also, I think it’s difficult to write about experiences while incorporating everything that constitutes modern living. If I write a poem that simply mentions iPhones, it will either be taken as a condemnation or a celebration of them. Unfortunately, poetry desperately needs to mention iPhones to stay current. We shouldn’t start writing about iPhones. We should write about the things we’ve always written about – nature v. man, death, life, love, heartache, loneliness, war, anguish – in short, human emotion. But human emotion is greatly wrapped up in technology now and our poetry should reflect that.

Third, we don’t have time for reflection. Poetry requires space. Lots and lots of space. Poetry is not easy. It’s not something you can understand just after one reading. And I think many of us don’t understand why we should put in the time when we can read things that we can understand immediately. The truth is we don’t know how to discern. If we knew what was bad poetry and what was good poetry, if we knew that when we put the time into a poem, we would get a higher truth, I think we would be more likely to reflect. But we don’t know. So it’s our fault and poetry’s fault. We should create space for it, and poetry should honor that space.

Poetry is meant to inspire. It’s meant to illuminate something bigger and better than ourselves. That’s why we can’t lose it. Poetry is life. That’s what it means when we say a sunset is “poetic.” It means that the beauty inspires us. We can’t lose the language to say that.

I think religion is a lot like poetry.

Unknown's avatar

I Believe

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I believe words are powerful. I believe the things we say matter. I believe you can say the same thing two different ways and you can have effectively said two very different things.

I don’t believe the world is getting dumber. I don’t believe in apathy. I don’t believe that my generation has less of an appreciation of fine art than my parents’ generation.

I believe fine art is different for everyone. I believe that’s okay.

I believe in God and love and bagels.

I believe ideas accumulate inside of us and if we don’t get them out (through writing, painting, performing, dancing, laughing) then there is no room for new ones.

I believe Real Living hurts. I believe it aches the way a good workout does. I believe you always need a Gatorade after Real Living.

I believe in plans and forms of fate and connections.

I believe in serendipity.

I believe in this woman named Sarah whom I met sitting at a bar who told me that haircutting was like engineering.