Ridiculous

"The right to be ridiculous is something I hold dear"
U2
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Everyone wants to be cool. I try to be cool, but its just so hard:) Its neither hot nor cold, just somewhere in the middle - apathetic. Its "cool" to be cool, "cool" to be apathetic, to not care, to be unaffected and without emotion - don't let any body or any situation rattle you. But its so hard because our little human heart is always wanting to go crazy - to believe in something, to be on fire about something. We care.

A dear friend and her husband stopped through Gainesville last week to visit - they are super cool people - what I mean is that they are really "wonderful" people, but "apathetic" by no means. They've packed up their house and are off to Ethiopia in a few months to minister to young women brutalized by sex trafficking and looking to start life afresh. They left me a cd they'd recently picked up called "Can you hear us?" (not by the David Crowder Band). Its not an uplifting-easy-listening sort of cd - all the songs are about social injustice. As I listen on my way to work this morning, I find myself wanting to cry - I feel a little ridiculous at the stop light, and hope no one will look over and see me. I especially like the first song on the album - the chorus is catchy, and I find myself still singing it long after the car engine is turned off and the cd stops.

"Wouldn't this be ridiculous!"

The verses are a series of hypotheticals: "What if we...(did something for the oppressed), Instead of...(doing something for ourselves)". In our cool culture that really is ridiculous and extreme...and a little edgy. What if we cared, and lived as if we cared about something bigger than ourselves? I feel suffocated and get claustrophobic just chillin' in the middle of cool - let me outside, let me be a little crazy. I want to be ridiculous.