Falling in Love...again

Today, I was driving down Second Street, and I fell in love again. I was struck by the people walking on the streets bustling about here and there. I was struck by the abandon buildings on one side of the street and the beautiful murals and graffiti on the other side of the street. I drove down Willis past Avalon International Bakery that was packed like usual to find a parking place. I got out of my car, looked around, and was struck by the love I have for this city. This city that is so broken, bruised, hurt, raw, and real.

Everything in this city is so real that is almost hurts... it does hurt. In C.S. Lewis' book, The Great Divorce, a man takes a bus that leads to heaven. Everything is so REAL there that the blades of grass hurt his feet. Eventually though, he is able to walk further and further into heaven that his feet become stronger and he like busts out of his old self (I think that's how it goes. It has been a while since I have read the book. I know the blades of grass hurt his feet though). Could you imagine that? Could you imagine having blades of grass hurt your feet... because it is so real?

I don't think we live in a world of reality anymore. I don't think we even know what is real and what is imaginary anymore. We spend so much time creating our own worlds that we cannot even see the reality of the world in which we live in. There is a world out there that is real- it is beautiful, majestic, awesome, broken, frail, wet, dry, hard, soft, filled with tears, joys, dreams, people, plants, buildings, animals, air, grass, roses, rocks. At the Detroit Institute of Art there is a piece of art which is really hard to understand. It's just massive rocks simply placed upon the floor. The artist challenges the viewers to take a moment to notice the shape, color, structure, simplicity, massiveness, and beauty of these rocks. Imagine if we did the same thing to people! What if we took time to listen to the beauty of the foreign language of those sitting next to us in the coffee shop. The eyes, hands, facial features of those we pass on the street, in the market, at work, the list can go on. What if we look the homeless person we walk by right in the eye that they know they are loved and cared about... that someone gives a damn about them, yet do we?

Why are we so obsessed with reality television? What is real about reality television except that there are real person on the other side of the "idiot box"? (I remember learning in elementary school that idiot box is the name for televisions in Australia.) Are we so stuck on reality television that we can no longer live in the reality of the world around us?

I don't know what Detroit is doing to me. It's changing me. I feel like I have been laid bare here. By being stripped down to my bare essentials, I am coming to understand what it means to be human. To be a live. To just be.