It's spring break so I figured I would write something. After this week, I only have 3.5 weeks of school left. The first year of seminary is almost done, it's been an interesting ride. It's been filled with emotional, spiritual and mental changes and challenges.

I decided to come home for break and yesterday I had a small vision of the future. I went downtown with some of the girls from seminary. They came in for the day. We went to the field museum, navy pier and the borders on state street. We walked to all these places and my dogs were barking by the end of the day. I took the brown line home and while listening to Lupe Fiasco, I had a vision. By the way, it's awesome to be looking at the skyline at night on the train while listening to "go go gadget flow." "I'm from a city in the midwest, best city in the whole wide world." I got chills. Back to this vision. Over this first year in seminary, I have wondered what my future would be. Would I ever come back to Chicago? Until last night, I didn't think I would. I figure I will finish my M.Div. at Western and then take my first call to a church anywhere. I could stay at that church hopefully 5-10 years and get some good experience. At some point I would come back to Chicago and start my own church. That's as far as I got. I felt good about that vision. Of course I will be prayerful about it and its still at least 10 years down the road.

Speaking of Lupe Fiasco, I went to his concert last week and it was amazing. He had so much energy on stage. My two favorite songs of the night were "go go gadget flow" and "daydreamin". Beforehand, there was a lecture given by Cornel West, he spoke on theology and hip-hop. Calvin College has a faith and music festival and this lecture and the concert were a part of that. Cornel West is a professor at Princeton and is the head of the African American Studies department and he is a well known philosopher. He challenged me in so many ways when he spoke. He first spoke of being Christian and loving others. He said that it was an audacious statement to say that you are a Christian. With all that comes with it, I agree with him. I use it rather flippantly at times. He spoke of loving other and not standing for injustice in this world. If you love others it should anger you when they are treated injustly. He went on to speak of aristotle and the idea of examining one's own life and soul. It is out of this framework that he began to speak of faith and music. The gist of his lecture was that music is a reflection of society or can even be a commentary on society. African American music in particular is a view of society from the "least of these". It made me think, what does hip hop say about our society? Christians, white ones in particular, are quick to dismiss hip hop. I acknowledge that not all hip hop is worth listening to but it is still a reflection. Even bling bling raps shows us that our society is full of greed and getting what's yours. Dr. West made a distinction between Constantinian rap and prophetic rap. I liked this distinction and I think we can apply it to many other things. Overall, the lecture challenged me to truly live out my faith.

I think that's all I got right now...