What's Good?

Some fragmented thoughts on breakfast tacos, the problem with Texas, sweeping generalizations, and two lovely songs

Thursday, December 30
Grand Rapids, Michigan

Hello, friendly reader.

We spent Christmas in Texas with Tristan’s family. That I ended up marrying a Texan has been one of the great surprises of my adulthood. Before I met Tristan, I knew little about Texas, except that it was home to the Dallas Cowboys; since I was reared a San Francisco 49ers fan, this meant that Texas was a land of iniquity.

Over the course of my relationship with Tristan, I’ve come to appreciate—even love, in the complicated and sometimes difficult sense of the word—Texas. His hometown of Houston is a particular wonder, a wildly diverse cultural capital with terrific museums and excellent restaurants that is one of America’s most underrated cities. Yes, you have the ridiculous freeways and the sprawling suburban subdivisions. But you also have the Rothko Chapel’s moody glory and the majestic patience of the live oaks that have borne witness to generations of change.

Of course the thing that really won me over to Texas was the food: An unforgettable burrito, with a freshly handmade tortilla, in Marfa. Pillowy tamales, which we scarfed down in our car, in Pecos. Gulf oysters as well as unique Viet-Cajun fusion cooking in Houston. Melt-in-your-mouth brisket, with the gorgeous smokiness endowed slowly by the fire—especially at Micklethwait and Franklin in Austin as well as Cattleack in Dallas. My mother-in-law’s cheesecake. Queso wherever.

Then there is the breakfast taco. There was my life before I tried a breakfast taco, and there is the sanctified, blessed existence after. I just love breakfast tacos. I love them with bacon. I love them with chorizo. I love them with potatoes. I love them with sausage. I love them with avocado. I love them with cheese. I love them with migas. I just love breakfast tacos (corn tortilla > flour tortilla).

The other day, I posted a picture of a particularly outstanding, spectacularly messy specimen—carnitas, fried egg, house-made salsa—from Lazarus Brewing, in Austin. My caption: “God bless Texas.”

What soon appeared in my DMs were snide remarks and sneering swipes about the entire state of Texas, its reprehensible people, its retrograde politics, its backwardness. One person commented that Texas indeed needed blessing. I was surprised: All I’d done was post a picture of a pretty taco. 

It brought to mind something that had happened the week before, after Joe Manchin, the senior senator from West Virginia, announced his opposition to one of the Biden Administration’s keystone pieces of legislation. Afterward, the actor Bette Midler tweeted this:

It also echoed a Trumpian habit. Remember what the former President said during difficult negotiations with senators over immigration policy? Clearly frustrated, he described sub-Saharan African nations as well as those whose citizens qualify for temporary protective status, including Haiti and El Salvador, as “shithole countries.”

It’s one thing to disagree with a political position or a policy stance. It’s entirely another to judge an entire community, a whole group of people, by that position or policy. What is this tendency to condescend to an entire state or nation? Why the impulse to flatten an amalgam of millions of people into a caricature? How do we so easily dehumanize and disdain?

One thing that bothers me so much about this habit is that it’s a troubling act of bearing false witness against our neighbors. In other words, we lie—and we do so with regrettable ease, refusing to see how we draw these fictional characters and then breathe life into them, giving them motives and means. And once these characters have been set up, we stand in opposition to them.

One person who wrote to me to share her disdain for Texas later followed up. Her comment, she explained, had been inspired by her opposition to the state’s recent legislation on abortion. She acknowledged being fearful.

Perhaps one of the downsides of social media is that it has made it easier for us to give voice to sentiments that, with slower technology, we might have submitted to our better selves for editing. We can’t blame the platforms, though, for what’s in our hearts. And the difficult truth is that we will not insult our way to healing or sneer a path out of our fears. 

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathanael famously said when his friend Philip first told him about Jesus the Nazarene. I imagine the edge in that comment—the condescension, the judgment. And I can almost see the roll in Philip’s eyes as he responded, “Come and see.”

Come and see.

There’s a gentle invitation in Philip’s words: that we slow down, that we pay attention, that we make room. Come and see something that might surprise you. Come and see something that might challenge your predispositions. Come and see something that might be more, or different, or more layered and rich and complicated, than what it first appears.

Come and see.

There’s an ask in Philip’s reply too: that we be self-aware enough to know what we don’t know. Truth is, we’re all sophisticated about some things but deeply parochial about others. So many cultures remain utterly foreign to me: Throw me into the midst of an Iowa cornfield, and I will still be a rube. Send me to a rural Southeast Asian village, and I might show myself to be a flailing fool.

Come and see.

As I’ve returned to Texas, sometimes with Tristan and occasionally on my own, my affection for the place has taken on new texture and color. While I still don’t like the Dallas Cowboys, I can now accept that those who identify as their fans do not suffer from some intractable moral failure. As my relationship with the place and its people has deepened, my love for it has grown. 

That hasn’t lessened my frustrations with some aspects of Texas. But I want to believe in a kind of love that not only hopes for the redemption of what’s not good but also honors what is good—love that names what’s ugly, love that admires what’s beautiful, love that isn’t prone to exaggeration of either and is utterly unafraid of the resulting tension and mess. Love reminds us that we’re bound together. Love recognizes that we’re all still partway through our journey of becoming. Love makes room for the things we still struggle to understand. 

What I’m Listening to: Multiple people have asked me what my favorite part of Wholehearted Faith is. I’m always reluctant to answer, but I have admitted that the epilogue, entitled “Telos,” has a special place in my heart. I was delighted, then, to happen upon a song partly inspired by that section of the book. It’s written by Leslie R. Kimble, who describes it as “a contemplation about the liminal space we find ourselves in when we don’t know how something will work out.” She sings of “the love and the tension, the fear and the rage, the range of emotions all caught in the air.... Let me step back for a minute, as I try to make sense of it all.” Leslie writes on her blog that this is the first song she has ever uploaded to Soundcloud. “Maybe this will be the only one. Maybe there will be more,” she says. “I am embracing the unknown.” I, for one, am grateful for her bravery. The song is lovely.

The singer-songwriter Joy Oladokun’s album “In Defense of My Own Happiness” is one of my favorite finds of 2021. One track in particular draws me back repeatedly. It’s called “Breathe Again,” and it is to my ears a gorgeous modern psalm. Her soulful voice rings with ache and issues a heartfelt lament, yet I also hear in these words a note of hope.

When the world’s so heavy I can’t stand
I close my eyes and start again
Though my heart is in my hands
I won’t break
Give me faith to bend

Am I looking for revival?
Am I dressed in other’s sin?
Hold my breath until I’m honest
Will I ever breathe again? 

---

This is my last letter to you for 2021. I have no doubt that 2022 will bring its own particular joys and sorrows, pleasant surprises and sadnesses large and small. Yesterday, I finally put words to one minor disappointment that I realize I hadn’t wanted to name—and it’s funny how saying something out loud (or, in my case, texting it) made it all the more real: We’re in the midst of a kitchen renovation, and I had long hoped that we would welcome the Year of the Tiger in that new space. But you know how renovations go. We will mark the Lunar New Year on February 1, and it will not be in that space.

As far as disappointments go, this is a tiny one; we will have a lovely new kitchen soon enough. But it’s a disappointment nonetheless, and I share it with you in part as a reminder that we need not rank our griefs or, for that matter, our triumphs. 

As you make your own way into 2022, here is my prayer for you: 

May you make room for both delight and disappointment, joy and sorrow, and through it all, may you feel the courage to name these things candidly and to navigate them wisely.

May you perceive the beauty around you and within you—in the dance of the sunshine on freshly fallen snow, in the growth of the buds that will soon enough pop up to remind us of the resilience of life, in the swirls and whirls of a flock of birds against a blue sky, in an unexpected burst of shared laughter, in the gift of an offered confidence, in the satisfying savor of a favorite meal, in the complexity of the body that receives that goodness but also honestly vexes you—and may all this stir in you not just gratitude but also wonder.

May you know deep and true rest: rest that enfolds you into its restorative gentleness, rest that fuels you for the road ahead, rest that sings to you a story of grace.

May you sense the possibility of hope.

May you be blindsided by blessing.

May you feel the strong and tender embrace of the God who made you, the God who gave his body and breath for you, and the God who accompanies you still.

May you be attentive to the love that is always with you and for you, recognizing its steady presence, receiving it with gladness, and lavishing it onto a world that so yearns for its justice and its balm.

As always, I’m so glad we can stumble through all this together, and I’ll try to write again soon.

Yours,
Jeff