Jesus with a can of spray paint

I drove around the Metroplex today, hoping to find a non-corporate coffee shop to support. They were all closed. Somewhere in the quest for coffee not offered to the goddess of Seattle, I found myself at a traffic light staring down a causeway at the skyline. In some theological/philosophical sense skylines really mess me up. The jagged spires are in a way containers for basically all that I find ugly about the city. The tallest structures of a cities core generally contain corporate offices, banks, and law firms. All institutions which I don’t hold in the highest regard. Now we also find lofts mingling their way into higher air space; lofts which house the legions of young professionals who’s lives have been enlisted to the anonymous commercial machines they live between. Sometimes I think of this when I drive around a big city. Sometimes. But, more often I just take in the grandeur of it all and feel strangely blessed. I felt it again today. I stared wide-eyed at the varied planes of architectural creativity.

I guess I feel a tension in the belonging of the city. Cities have a way of making one feel like they are part of something, even when we come to despise what we are a part of. Apart from all the ills of repression and hatred endemic to the city, there is still a beauty to it all.

My friend went on a date the other day. In the middle of this romantic endeavor he was approached by a homeless man. After persistently assuring the man he would not give him money, he invited the man to talk, which the man finally accepted. A short-lived relationship was formed, and I imagine both were more human for it. I think it gave me hope just to hear it. As we all stand beneath these man-made mountains, with their anonymous forces that entrap us all, we are all still human at our core. For all the rigid legalities, and ideological entrapments the city presents we all still long to be human in the fullest sense that the word lends itself to. For all the ghosts underneath the steal and concrete, there is even more of a spirit, creative and gentle. It cries out continually from the depths of everyones heart, from the part of us that refuses to amount to a bank account and social security number.

It amazes me how much of the arts have their origin in city . . . among the lower classes. In music we can see that blues and jazz originated primarily among blacks in the American South. Artists are reputed to starve and their fame comes long after their death. Theater, independent movies, writers, poets, all rarely come from the upper classes. There is something in the life of a city that breeds creativity. Decades later the wealthy write out checks for absurd sums of money purchasing such works. Almost as though wealth in itself is devoid of meaning, so meaningfulness must be purchased. Barns are filled with artifacts that seem to give importance and depth to the life of the rich. Meanwhile lower classes go on creatively, sacrificially producing beauty.

I find it funny how “civilization” on the whole takes life from this phenomenon, and yet simultaneously holds it back. We create museums to hold paintings and sculptures. We charge $10 dollars to go see the expressions of by-gone ages, while blocks away teenagers from impoverished areas are arrested for “defacing” the blank walls of condemned buildings with graffiti. I saw a graffiti mural the other day and thought how beautiful it was. The poor of the city denying that their existence will be a blank wall. Their mural was a caricature of Ghandi with a quote by him about peace. I compare that with a modernist piece noted by its existential hopelessness prominently placed in the museum across the highway. On one hand I love that such feelings can be expressed in such a lucid form. But, how odd is it that we uphold such despondent expression as central to what it is to be “cultured”, while blocks away the culture that naturally arises from the ranks of the poor is punished with fines and jail time? As is often the case, the voice of the poor is whitewashed; blanked out by history.

I don’t suppose I can speak adequately for the poor or for the rich, as I don’t truly belong to either ‘side’. I’ve grown up in the endangered social grouping of middle class America. I guess I conveniently suppose that Jesus grew up in a middle class family. That’s a debatable assumption I know. Yet, it’s one that allows me to wonder how I could go about life in a meaningful way. Jesus didn’t appear to side with rich or poor exclusively. But, it does appear he preferred to live among the poor, and tended to favor their company more. I’ve frequently heard this as carrying deep theological significance, and while not denying those as possible, I wonder sometimes if it wasn’t simply that the life of the poor can often seem so much richer. This is a generality that is not universal, but one that quite often seems to be true. The rich hold up great works of art. They place them in museums, surrounded by guards and cameras. The museum environment can seem so sterile. There is a dogmatic propriety that floats thickly in the air in museums. It is as though the painted rags and chiseled rocks have been given a religious authority that requires our reverence. We hear the names of artists as though we were in the sacred presence of saints. These relics before us become the iconic presence of the gods of culture.

I certainly don’t mean to sound as though I dislike art. I generally have a lot of fun going to museums, but I think we have been fed a lie in our society concerning art. Art in our world has come to be judged by standards of privilege. Art is purported to be something contained and rare. We are told that “good” art is somehow scarce, and thus it becomes the duty of the appreciative rich to keep it from the destructive hands of the poor. The canvas rags become invested with the interests of the powerful of society. It becomes a value commodity because it is invested with power.

Were we to give the Mona Lisa to a lower class family with no strings attached, I imagine it would probably find a prominent place on some wall in their house. Yet over time it might get scratched by moving furniture. If it were close to a window it might get sun-bleached. As time goes on, this famed piece of art would decay and eventually be destroyed. And, for all it’s historical significance, being a turning point in artistic consciousness and three dimensional representation, it is really famous because the upper class hold it to be one of the most valuable pieces of art in the world. I highly doubt that the majority of people who make the pilgrimage to the Louvre every year really have any in depth understanding of why the works there are of importance, only that this is where cultured people go to say they are cultured. The thing that I’m trying to point out is that this religion of culture that has arisen is one that serves the interest of the upper classes of Western society. By participating in this religion, one gains potential for power and privilege in the society of people who adhere to it. It is like an anonymous church that so many attend hoping to move ahead.

Then we go to the ghetto and try and talk about the statue of David, and receive no power but only looks ranging from ambivalence to a lustful hatred, and we wonder why. Ultimately I think it because we are speaking of a “church” that has rejected and hated the poor. We are speaking of a society that has used this religion of culture to keep the poor in their place, after all these are people who show no appreciation for such ‘divine’ beauty. Consider how many millions of dollars are spent on cleaning and preserving the paintings which some frivolous rich people have estimated are worth millions of dollars to preserve. To an inner-city resident, working 80 hours a week at two jobs which barely pay the bills that must sound like blasphemy. When you work like a slave for a job you hate, your sense of beauty is quite different than one who makes millions of dollars by simply shifting a few stocks and make some executive decision to make benefit cuts on the many workers you manage who work 80 hours a week for your company.

The saddest thing I see in our society is the way that the beauty intrinsic to the poor is discredited and repressed. They are told that their art is nothing, that if they want to get anywhere they must emulate what they see in museums. They must seek to create what can be sold to collect dust on the empty walls of rich people’s mansions.

I think about hip-hop, a cultural phenomena that came out of the inner-city which sought to display the culture intrinsic to them. It was no carbon-copy of upper class values, but a cultural display of the hopes and thoughts of the city’s less privileged members. It was a different religion. Music was liberated. Instead of expensive instruments, all that was needed was one to beat-box and one to come up with rhymes. The empty and hopeless walls of abandoned buildings were spray-painted to express the values of the poor.

I think Jesus would have gone to museums from time to time. I think he could have easily appreciated the beauty of what is there. But, I doubt he would have felt much at home. I doubt he would return with frequency. I think instead we could see him roaming the ‘less fortunate’ areas, staring at a graffiti mural and thinking how wonderful it was, thinking how good it is that people can find their own song to sing.

Maybe I can see how there is no hope in hatred between social classes. There’s plenty of that already and it doesn’t appear to be going anywhere. If there’s hope for the world then I think it starts in the city, and that hope starts with the less privileged majority finding the culture that comes from among them. This is no revolution, as revolutions are a certain means to achieve more of the same, but simply a means of bringing out what is indelibly part of being human. This is how things change.

I think of how funny it is that the majority of rap albums in America are bought by middle to upper class teenagers. Ironic. I think it is quite common that the rich tend to belatedly “come down”.

I talked with another friend not too long ago about the concept I often hear voiced that “the rich need Jesus too.” My friend who is the pastor of a church where I live, commented how ridiculous it was that while this line of thinking may be true, it is the same line of thinking that is universal among churches in America. Even the poor churches are quietly hoping to tap into the “wealthy” demographic. And in this way church has lost its inheritance.

The church IS the movement of the poor, and insofar as it remains true to that, the rich will long to join it. I think Jesus, who it seems to me was more comfortable among the intrinsic depth of the lower class than the depth purchase by those higher up, will always remain among the poor. We seek him among the great cathedrals in europe, the commercial mega-churches in the suburbs, at mountainside summer camps, in spiritual journeys, but instead of him we find the hollow god of culture. I think Jesus is instead somewhere in the ghetto, at a family bar-b-que, at a neighborhood basketball court, or hurriedly leaving a message of hope illegally on an abandoned wall. Reminding the less fortunate, if only for a brief second, that the hope of God is there’s; that culture is no gift of the rich, but a grace which costs them nothing. There is no admission fee.

I’m excited to be moving back to the city. But, for all the beauty of the skyline, I’m hoping, this time, to find the beauty just beyond the reach of the shadows of sky scrapers. For all I’ve learned, I’ll be looking, with the hope that hope will find me.