This is so beautiful and SOOO needed. But I’m so over reposting things that I think matter and need to be heard. I want to read your words to people face-to-face, in conversation. Here’s to more in-person dialogue in 2022.
If you were dropped in the middle of an Iowa cornfield, you wouldn't be a rube, you'd just be lost (we all would). But we'd welcome you with open arms, so please come visit! And obviously, not all of Iowa is a cornfield. Love your words and reflection. Thank you.
I've managed Des Moines and Iowa City before... and they were great! I'm sure, with time, I could learn my way around cornfields. I just have no knowledge right now.
I appreciate your defense of Texas-my state has many faults, but as anything the people & places of Texas are not a monolith. May we all have the grace to not throw others under the bus because of our perception of label associated with them.
After spending 41 years in Texas I retired and returned to my home state of Mississippi. I couldn’t really appreciate Texas for what it was, who it made me to be, and so much more until I moved away. I find myself referring to Texas as home…i never thought that would happen.?? I miss it everyday. I appreciate your kind words of a place i love and all it is. Mississippi is now home and will help make me a different person…a new place but missing the old place!! Thanks for helping me also see and hear your perspective of how we need to think before we speak of others….
Thank you for this note (and for the many other notes that warmed me in 2021). I take the blessing with me into 2022 and am deeply grateful for your tender and mindful voice and presence. Brenda (writing from The Netherlands)
I'm a native Texan who's never lived elsewhere...I hope those folks realize that there are plenty of us here who agree about, for instance, the abortion ban. I think this state is the story of what's going on in the US, in micro.
Thank you, thank you. I always appreciate your honesty and the nuance you bring to conversations. This is a fantastic point about Nazareth. I hadn’t thought of that like, ever. I’ve lived in Texas most of my life and also usually respond with “ewe, Texas”. I don’t like the heat, the politics, the lack of good gluten free & vegan pizza… but if I think of the details of Texas, I do find the good things, as you have.
As much as I love snuggling under a warm blanket and the comfort it brings, putting a whole blanket of negativity over a certain group, state, country does not truly bring comfort. It hides not only the negative but the positive, and it separates us from one another. Let’s start lifting the blankets of our prejudices and hatred and see what’s really behind them.
What a blessing to read this today! Thank you, Jeff, for this and all the other beautiful notes that you’ve written (and I’ve treasured) throughout 2021.
This was a bit healing for me. My relationship with Texas has had to be deconstructed in similar ways to how others deconstruct evangelicalism. Growing up a mile or so away, Texas was my heritage, the land of golden opportunity, rich and clean and big, highways without the potholes and hopelessness of New Mexico. (If there is one thing we're good at, it's love that's "prone to exaggeration." haha) Certainly not all of it was, but even in reality, the contrast was stark when driving across the border to get to... well, anything. It was literally my gateway to the rest of the world. We went to a musical every summer praising Texas as the land of friendship, hope, and freedom. Learning the more complex sides, the change in my own beliefs as well as it changing itself, and education and awareness of how things deemed "oh but that was a long time ago, hate doesn't live here NOW" was a lie, crushed my dream version of this place I'd always seen as the sparkling promised land, if I could only escape my little town on the wrong side of an arbitrary line. I still have hope for the bad things to change in the future, but my disappointment comes from loving and being forever tied to a place. Texans are literally my blood family, my ancestors, my own past. That is made so much more complex by the remarks like those instagram comments, and others who want to cut it off completely, or dismiss all Texans as the worst stereotypes and people in power (as if everyone living in New York is exactly like the former president famously from there!). Like the church, there is much to critique and to stand against, but there are real people being affected by those policies and norms and attitudes, a microcosm of the world, from big global cities like DFW and Houston to little towns preserving their culture and heritage and language through the generations. There is so much to love and to fear, and I think that's what hurts about it. Thinking of what it could be, what I once dreamed it was, and having hope that it could be one day, with real love in action.
Jenna, thanks for sharing this. Many of us have complicated relationships with places; I know I do. However complex the love, don't we always want the places we care about and the people who inhabit them to flourish? Yet we have such vastly different visions of what flourishing is.
We shall eat breakfast tacos and parley on how we can better see those around us with love.
I absolutely LOVE this Jeff. Thank you for your healing words. I love the part about Nathaneal😊 Happiest of New Years💕
This is so beautiful and SOOO needed. But I’m so over reposting things that I think matter and need to be heard. I want to read your words to people face-to-face, in conversation. Here’s to more in-person dialogue in 2022.
If you were dropped in the middle of an Iowa cornfield, you wouldn't be a rube, you'd just be lost (we all would). But we'd welcome you with open arms, so please come visit! And obviously, not all of Iowa is a cornfield. Love your words and reflection. Thank you.
I've managed Des Moines and Iowa City before... and they were great! I'm sure, with time, I could learn my way around cornfields. I just have no knowledge right now.
I appreciate your defense of Texas-my state has many faults, but as anything the people & places of Texas are not a monolith. May we all have the grace to not throw others under the bus because of our perception of label associated with them.
Jeff,
After spending 41 years in Texas I retired and returned to my home state of Mississippi. I couldn’t really appreciate Texas for what it was, who it made me to be, and so much more until I moved away. I find myself referring to Texas as home…i never thought that would happen.?? I miss it everyday. I appreciate your kind words of a place i love and all it is. Mississippi is now home and will help make me a different person…a new place but missing the old place!! Thanks for helping me also see and hear your perspective of how we need to think before we speak of others….
Regards,
Susan Williams
Thank you for this note (and for the many other notes that warmed me in 2021). I take the blessing with me into 2022 and am deeply grateful for your tender and mindful voice and presence. Brenda (writing from The Netherlands)
I'm a native Texan who's never lived elsewhere...I hope those folks realize that there are plenty of us here who agree about, for instance, the abortion ban. I think this state is the story of what's going on in the US, in micro.
I thought of my lovely friends in Texas as I read this. Thank you.
Thank you, thank you. I always appreciate your honesty and the nuance you bring to conversations. This is a fantastic point about Nazareth. I hadn’t thought of that like, ever. I’ve lived in Texas most of my life and also usually respond with “ewe, Texas”. I don’t like the heat, the politics, the lack of good gluten free & vegan pizza… but if I think of the details of Texas, I do find the good things, as you have.
This suburban Houstonian thanks you. (And yes, the food here is amazing.)
As much as I love snuggling under a warm blanket and the comfort it brings, putting a whole blanket of negativity over a certain group, state, country does not truly bring comfort. It hides not only the negative but the positive, and it separates us from one another. Let’s start lifting the blankets of our prejudices and hatred and see what’s really behind them.
What a blessing to read this today! Thank you, Jeff, for this and all the other beautiful notes that you’ve written (and I’ve treasured) throughout 2021.
Amen.
A Great Positive way to end 2021. Waldo
This was a bit healing for me. My relationship with Texas has had to be deconstructed in similar ways to how others deconstruct evangelicalism. Growing up a mile or so away, Texas was my heritage, the land of golden opportunity, rich and clean and big, highways without the potholes and hopelessness of New Mexico. (If there is one thing we're good at, it's love that's "prone to exaggeration." haha) Certainly not all of it was, but even in reality, the contrast was stark when driving across the border to get to... well, anything. It was literally my gateway to the rest of the world. We went to a musical every summer praising Texas as the land of friendship, hope, and freedom. Learning the more complex sides, the change in my own beliefs as well as it changing itself, and education and awareness of how things deemed "oh but that was a long time ago, hate doesn't live here NOW" was a lie, crushed my dream version of this place I'd always seen as the sparkling promised land, if I could only escape my little town on the wrong side of an arbitrary line. I still have hope for the bad things to change in the future, but my disappointment comes from loving and being forever tied to a place. Texans are literally my blood family, my ancestors, my own past. That is made so much more complex by the remarks like those instagram comments, and others who want to cut it off completely, or dismiss all Texans as the worst stereotypes and people in power (as if everyone living in New York is exactly like the former president famously from there!). Like the church, there is much to critique and to stand against, but there are real people being affected by those policies and norms and attitudes, a microcosm of the world, from big global cities like DFW and Houston to little towns preserving their culture and heritage and language through the generations. There is so much to love and to fear, and I think that's what hurts about it. Thinking of what it could be, what I once dreamed it was, and having hope that it could be one day, with real love in action.
Jenna, thanks for sharing this. Many of us have complicated relationships with places; I know I do. However complex the love, don't we always want the places we care about and the people who inhabit them to flourish? Yet we have such vastly different visions of what flourishing is.
Yes, exactly