1 post tagged “culture”

Thanks everyone for these thoughtful replies to part one!  I think the points about tolerance and being accepting of other opinions is perhaps one of the biggest issues.  When I had the shop open a variety of people came though and I could enjoy the company of a darling liberal democrat ranting and raving about some pet issue, followed by a woman with great wealth who knew Jackie-O and talked about the evils of society and how people are so uninformed yet God still works everything for our good.  I was able to listen – and agree in places and be engaged with them, even though they each represented something remarkably different.  I guess that is the element I don't want to lose.  I found myself on the listening side of most of those conversations.  I'm ok with that.  It went with the territory.  (One woman joked that I was her therapy - which is kinda sad - she could have had three shrinks for what she spent in my shop.)  Now that I've closed that business I've had more time to think about the way I did business there.  And I want to find my voice in the midst of all this.  The past months I have been out of the public eye, squirreled away in my quiet monastic studio working long hours and goofing off now and then and watching the construction workers in the alley outside my window every chance I get.  Life is good.

I’ve been in overtly Christian shops that come off so kitchy and ticky tacky that it makes me want to hurl.  I was in a darling little place in Dunlap, Indiana recently called “The Refinery” and I fell in love.  It was a beautifully decorated café, I found it hip and tasteful, and I think there was a verse painted on a wall somewhere that I recognized.  It was beautifully done and I was pleasantly surprised.  I hate it when bad taste and Christianity collide and give birth to the kind of artless kitch that can be purchased at “Family Christian Bookstores” where the franchise owners don’t have much say in what they carry and most of the work has Bible verses emblazoned on it somewhere.  Artwork that has to be identified with a verse to be “Christian…”  Honey, that’s not art – that’s propaganda.  But I digress.  I stayed with a friend on a recent trip, and her big new expensive house is full of that kind of wordy “artwork” and it was so strange to me.  Not in my house!  (See how superior I am because I have a decent art collection?  Joking!)  But hey, we’ve established that I’m a little weird.  LOL!

And to the handsome RG…  I think the things I’m most passionate about come from an internal place, perhaps in part as a reaction to the things that I hear from a variety of media outlets.  Certainly yes, I am a product of my surroundings and shaped by my generation, its systems and cultural biases.  I also grew up as part of a sub culture in this country, as a member of a group that (at one time) made much of not participating in the world's systems.  I still hold values that the mainstream culture likes to ridicule on a regular basis.  So what is new?  That doesn’t make me a victim of anything necessarily; it does make me able to hold counter cultural values in spite of the endless commercial efforts at conformity that come with living in America.  Mostly I’m struck by the contrast between what I think I’m seeing in the eyes of a homeless man from Nazareth, and the arrogance, materialism, and militarism I see in some people who speak His name with great ease.  The angst (to some degree or other) I get from that is internal.  I have a growing desire to make that point with at least a modicum of finesse and some respect for anyone's right to disagree.