Our Ghetto

Jesus loves you.

You know that bumper sticker, “Jesus loves you?”
Yeah.
I saw one the other day that was funny, it said, “Jesus hates you.”
I don’t really care if Jesus loves me.


At first we loved the ghettos.
We thought they were great.
That’s why we moved in the the first place;
Everyone was like us.
The kids played the same games,
The adults all related (at least on the surface).
We spoke the same language.
All around our ghettos we put up banners and hung flags;
We wanted people who weren’t like us to be attracted to us and to our ghettos.
Our truest messages we placed on these banners,
And we even put them into short phrases and sayings.

But then some of us started hanging out with people outside of our ghetto.
And we noticed that the walls of the ghetto followed us.
Our friends knew where we were from,
And they understood that we were different,
But they didn’t understand our sayings.
Sometimes they said things,
They poked a little fun.
How can we respond to our own meaningful sayings
When they are smirked at as trite and cliché?

The walls of the ghettos followed us.
We became ingrown,
Our stories only speak to us
The language of the world has changed around us.