Most of the time, I would imagine, I can come across to others (not here) as someone who can talk about sports and some news events in the world. A typical white guy. Get me talking about baseball or Kansas Jayhawks or the Chiefs… just look out.
And that’s true. And there is a reason for it. It’s as far as most people want to go. Underneath is a longing for something deeper, more meaningful, and holds the possibility of beautiful change. This is where I truly want to go and it rarely happens.
Catherine Meeks explains it this way:
What does cheap love look like? We could probably call it by many other names, but it’s what allows people of color and white people to sit in pews together for decades and know nothing about one another. It affirms that surface relationships will suffice. So we occupy physical space together and talk about how much we love one another, yet we never share our deepest hopes and fears.
Most of us fear disagreement. I know I do. I don’t look at discussions as “win/lose” arguments anymore. But I’ve found when someone begins to get at what they truly mean on a subject, they expect full agreement all around.
So, I relegate myself to, “How ’bout them Chiefs!”
It is not enough that I am in proximity to someone different than me. It is that I listen to their story. It is allowing others to bring their experiences into my world and let those experiences sit there.
When the video cam footage on the beating death of Tyre Nichols was released on Friday, I knew I had to hold in my emotions for awhile. I didn’t need the conversations around, “Well, what did he do?” and “If he had just listened.”
I needed to sit with the event and let it be. To mourn with a family that lost someone violently.
Deeper conversations are difficult because we don’t “feel love.” Yet, deeper conversations can be the most loving thing we can do. It may stir us or make us deeply uncomfortable… but if we will enter in we will find a place of deep love for one another.
Instead, we settle for cheap love. Surface “love.”
So… HOW ‘BOUT THEM CHIEFS?!?!?
Apprentice 2 Jesus 