I'm a Freakin American Man...

So the other day Angelyn had just finished giving a lecture on American slang in which she mentioned Ebonics. After Angelyn had finished one of our friends "Casanova" Crystal came up to her and said, "Oh yes, I have once had the opportunity to meet a freakin' American."

Angelyn responded with a, "A freakin' what?!"

"Yes a freakin' American. You know a black person?"

"Oh, you mean an African American?"

"Yes a freakin' American"

I'm thinking maybe our new slogan for anti-racism should be, "You're not white or black. You're a freakin' American man..."

I'm beginning to love my Thursday morning class. It's my English major class (the one with the Crazy Girls and Love Sick Amy (who has yet to quit taking my picture while I am teaching) and Cocoa). I teach them three times a week but I especially love Thursday's. I've been doing American music lessons and teaching them all the greats from Eric Clapton to Jimi Hendrix to Vanilla Ice. We usually listen to the song and then talk about what it was talking about. The other day we were listening to "Crossroads" by my personal favorite Bone Thugs N' Harmony. The song is about a guy whose friend dies and talking about what happens to him after death. We talked for a long time about things like this. Usually we always have something like that because that's what art does it talks about deeper things. And through all this I'm learning you don't have to talk about It to being talking about It. Maybe that's something we can all learn from in America, You don't have to say the name for it to count as mentioning him. I say all this to ask you to remember the Crazies. They're coming over on Saturday to Read with us. I'm wicked excited. I've been Asking for them for a while now, and what's better is they were the ones who initiated it.

I'm also slowly falling in love with the Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. If you haven't read it, you should (right now). In it he writes that when he was getting to ready to graduate from college people kept asking him what he was going to do when he graduated. He said he got so tired of it he eventually began to respond, "I'm not so much worried about what I will do as to who I am becoming." I've fallen in love with this quote. I think there's some deep truth in it because the truth is who you are, is what you will do. Who I am is what I will do regardless of the job I have or where I'm at. I think that is one of the main messages of the whole book. People always ask what is His Will or Plan in my life. And I'm beginning to wonder if maybe he cares more about who I am becoming that what I am doing. Because honestly doing always comes out of being. You can fake it for a while but eventually you will always go back to who you are at the core of your being.