Last Chance to See "Next Door"

Streetlamp Studio's two act play premiered last weekend to very receptive audiences. Tomorrow night (Saturday, 8/29) is the last public performance. A local newspaper reviewing the play described exactly the kind of tensions and questions it was written to help us think about, as well as the hopes it was meant to kindle:

It’s a set-up: White guilt, Black anger and Latino regret, that seems predictable at the outset but Vaughn Hall crafts the interlocking stories with wit, verve and ultimately pathos.

To quote Rodney King: “Why can’t we all just get along?”

For cynics it might just be a utopian dream, but there is considerable evidence that a majority of us believe in a society where different races and classes can peacefully co-exist.

You can read the entire review online at The Los Angeles Wave and you can still purchase tickets at the Streetlamp Studio website.

End the Violence of the Wicked

^“O righteous God,
who searches minds and hearts,
bring to an end the violence of the wicked
and make the righteous secure.” (Psalm 7:9)

Two weeks ago Martha C., 18, was shot and killed just around the corner from our house. She was sitting in the backseat of a car at a red light. Before opening fire, the gunman in the adjacent vehicle shouted “Where you all from?”; an inquiry which never has a right answer.

The City’s media outlets gave only passing reference to her death in three short blog posts that can be read at laist.com, LA Weekly, and Los Angeles Times.

This year in an eight block radius around our home, 4 people have been killed, 59 have been victims of aggravated assaults (where the intention was to produce death or great bodily harm), and 23 violent robberies have been carried out. As we mourn the loss of another young life and intercede for God to “end the violence of the wicked and make the righteous secure”, I am struck by our culture’s love of violence. Clearly, there is a turning that must begin in our own hearts.

We flirt with violence in our news, movies, music and games. We love its softer forms—the well-placed barb, the cut off, the ignore, the stereotype and the objectification of our neighbor—in our driving, our workplaces, our politics and, even our marriages. Only the burn of violence upon our flesh, or that of a close friend, possibly upon our streets, can pall our attraction, but only for a time.

Can we turn from violence as from pornography? Can we repent even of Violence’s softer forms?

Please pray for God to “end to the violence of the wicked”, beginning in our own hearts and extending through our communities, even South Central L.A. Let’s pray for God to connect our lives deeply to his redemptive purposes for a community like this one and “not turn away from our own flesh and blood” (Isaiah 58) – another form of violence. May the Lord “make the righteous secure.”