Zion

  This is my first blog post!  I'm excited to share in a project with my beautiful wife.  For now, she will tell a story of our lives over the last few years.  Periodically, I will give a more "topical" blog post, dealing with a concept or idea.  I may also share a personal story!  Essentially, my wife likes structure and I don't!  We'll talk about life mostly and how we are growing and changing.  Occasionally we'll allude to things we care about like education, Jesus, holistic living, sports, and beer.  Today, it's my birthday, and I'll talk about living life close to the center of national news.




It's been a year since Michael Brown Jr died after an altercation with Police Officer Darren Wilson near the Canfield Green Apartments in Ferguson, MO.  Brown, a teenager, was black and Officer Wilson, who was white, is not much older than myself.

Now, issues aside, the saga that unfolded with the actions that week in Ferguson, months later, and now a year late, resonate with me for two important reasons.

First, this saga took place in what I consider home.  Not just St. Louis, but the city of Ferguson was where I went to school from grades K-12 (and some of college).  It is where I attended church much of my life, and it is where a multitude of my family lived and still lives.  Even my parents were married at the intersection of Chambers and West Florissant, where businesses were affected by looting and arson over the last year.  My memories of Ferguson were numerous, and now, millions of people around the world will have memories of this town as well.

The second reason it resonates with is is that it happened on my birthday.  Every year, I expect a bunch of people I am close with, and not so close with, to celebrate another year of my life.  However, some of these same people will take part in events to remember the life of a teenager, with services and marches of mourning!  These events serve not just a purpose of mourning specifically this teenager, but also what it represents for people who are desiring a change.  A change that will lead to a different future.

The social issues of the Canfield Green apartments are not just confined to the area between Lucas and Hunt Boulevard, Chambers Road, Halls Ferry, and West Florissant.  These issues speak to a whole multitude of issues people face in different contexts and places.  Race, class, division of resources, struggle for power, the breakdown of family, this list goes on, and you may be able to come up with more ideas.  Most people will agree, change must happen, but that change is daunting.  As my life and the lives of others become almost "hyper-aware" of the issues, not many people can agree on a solution to these issues.  Even if we were to come up with a solution, some may balk at the idea of whether it will work or not.

I believe we need a solution.  I would be willing to take a stab at what this solution may be to boost my election ratings, but I do not believe that is the first step.

Could our first step be just to hit reset on our lives?  That seems like a good startup company!  It is as if our lives are a PC, and we just go through life browsing away accumulating junk we didn't even know we had picked up!  Does the Geek Squad come out and fix the hard drive of our lives?  I would consider that warranty on my next purchase.It almost seems comical to imagine changing all the wrong things in one's life all in an instant.  But on this birthday, I had a paradigm shift.  As I look to the past, and dream of the future,  I realized that I have the greatest opportunity, even if the possibility of seeing the change I dream of today or anytime is slim. 

"Zion" is a name used in many contexts throughout history.  Geographically, it can refer to a place known as Jerusalem across the world from me or here in the states, it's one of the most beautiful parks you could imagine.  In the Matrix trilogy, it's home base for the resistance and for Lauryn Hill, it was the name of her first child, when many encouraged her to abort the pregnancy to focus on her career.  Zion was something special for black slaves in America.  As they were oppressed, they still held to the hope that God would liberate them as he did the Hebrews under Pharaoh.  They longed for Zion, when they could arrive free in their homeland, as they believe that was what God intended.

As hope fades, I want to encourage others to not lose sight of the great opportunity to change, in spite of the circumstances.  We can still learn from the past, and we can grow, and we can try to be the change in our lives and in the world around us, even if not much changes that quickly.  Even if failures still outweigh the successes we see, and discouragement sets in, we still have the best opportunity.  At any instant, we may not be able to see the change, but we can start to be the change.

I realized this year, that at those moments when I decide that I have seen the past, and I want to change for the future, at that instant, my life starts to reset and have some of the change it needs!  This shift begins to become a catalyst towards more change, and small steps become exponential growth.  It might just take some time, but eventually, the battles we win start to add up in the wars we are fighting.

When we realize that a change in us is needed, the world around us immediately begins to change.  The future we dream of starts to become a reality.

So this year, as myself and others look back over the year and see crying of people needing a change, I want to stop and take a moment to celebrate.  Because I see a change happening.  And also it's my birthday.

I turn another year older and I see how much I have grown for the better. The earth turns 2016 soon (I'm kidding of course) and it might be better or worse, I'm not an expert!  Regardless, I still believe we can make it better.

Change is a process, and change takes time.  I may seem premature in my thoughts of being excited when so much work needs to be done.  Could we possibly think of the process as more like a marriage, where we enter into a lifetime commitment to see our world become better?  We can celebrate the beginning of the new life, one in which our lives are different from this point on.  We also get to celebrate the milestones too!    Cheers to that!

Every opportunity we have to realize that a change is needed, and we start to act in the new belief we have now acknowledged, the "Zion" we dream of, seems a tad bit closer.