Come in! Come in!

"If you are a dreamer, come in. If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, a Hope-er, a Pray-er, a Magic Bean buyer; if you're a pretender, come sit by my fire. For we have some flax-golden tales to spin. Come in! Come in!" -- Shel Silverstein

Sunday, March 08, 2009

'Hebrew Mamita' picks up cross, jams.


I LOVE 'Poetry Jams' or 'Poetry Slams'.

Russell Simmons and HBO used to have a late night program - "Def Poetry Jam" - which featured and showcased some of the best poets and poetry coming out of 'da 'hood'.

These young folk are angry and passionate and intelligent and insightful and their poetry is shot through and through with enough honesty and integrity as to make me weep.

This one is "The Hebrew Mamita" which I picked up over at Bishop Allen's place. Vanessa Hidary is particularly brilliant.

My grandmother used to say, "Everyone has a cross to bear." (My sermon on the same will appear later today. ) If ever there was a better example of the intersection of suffering, sacrifice and creativity, well, I've not seen it.

This is just a little something to jump start your Second Sunday in Lent.

Text of the poem can be found here.

4 comments:

Fran said...

I am weeping and weeping. I so totally LOVED this.

Oh Elizabeth, I love you.

Thank you for this Second Sunday of Lent jump start!

ROBERTA said...

Whoa! Thanks to you i just lost track of the last 45 mintues of my life :0

and that was a good thing!

i went to the bishop's site where i watched & read all sorts of intriguing items.

and this young woman has an amazing gift - such powerful words - a holy street preacher bringing us hope!

thanks elizabeth.

Cany said...

WOW. Wowowow.

That was absolutely fabulous.

Muthah+ said...

Oh, yeah! Too bad this white dyke can't preach like this. Too bad that Christians are so majority culture to appreciate what it means to be a Wandering Aramean. But somewhere down deep this woman speaks MY song, my life too.