Overview
Today on the podcast, I had the real privilege of getting to talk to Lo Alaman. Lo is an artist, speaker and minister. He works as Director of Community Life at the Harvest Campus of the Woodlands UMC the Woodlands, Texas. He is also a husband, a father, and a son of the Most High God. Whether preaching, spitting poetry, or just chilling with his new best friends, Lo seeks to create moments to minister the love of Jesus in every space he enters.
Today on the podcast, we talk about Lo’s new book We Sang a Dirge that released on December 3. This book is his first full-length work of poetry and is part lament of what is and part longing for what will be. It really is a powerful deep dive into his perspective on the events of and leading up to 2020. So if you haven’t already, make sure you grab a copy of We Sang a Dirge.
Lo, in this podcast, even reads one of his poems “20” to us and you won’t want to miss that, so join the conversation and let’s listen!
*The views expressed in this podcast don’t necessarily reflect the views of Asbury Seminary.
Mr. Lo Alaman, Artist. Speaker. Minister
Lo The Poet (Lo Alaman) could be considered an artist, speaker, minister, and Laker fan most days of the week. But there isn’t a day he doesn’t consider himself a husband, a father, and a son of The Most High God. Whether preaching, spitting poetry, or just chilling with new best friends, Lo seeks to create moments to minister the love of Jesus in every space he enters. Lo lives in Texas with his wife Erika and daughter Emersyn.
Heidi Wilcox, host of the Thrive Podcast
Writer, podcaster, and social media manager, Heidi Wilcox shares stories of truth, justice, healing and hope. She is best known as the host of Spotlight, (especially her blooper reel) highlighting news, events, culturally relevant topics and stories of the ways alumni, current students and faculty are attempting something big for God. If you can’t find her, she’s probably cheering on her Kentucky Wildcats, enjoying a cup of coffee, reading or spending time with her husband, Wes.
Show Notes
Transcript
Heidi Wilcox:
Hey everyone, welcome to this week’s episode of The Thrive with Asbury Seminary Podcast. I’m your host, Heidi E. Wilcox bringing you conversations with authors, thought leaders, and people just like you who are looking to connect where your passion meets the world’s deep need. Today on the podcast, I had the real privilege of getting to talk to Lo Alaman. Lo is an artist, speaker, and minister. He works as Director of Community Life at the Harvest Campus of the Woodlands United Methodist Church in Texas. He is also a husband, father, and son of the Most High God. Whether he’s preaching, spitting poetry, or just chilling with his new best friends, Lo seeks to create moments to minister the love of Jesus in every space he enters.
Heidi Wilcox:
Today on the podcast, we talked about Lo’s new book, We Sang a Dirge that released on December 3. This book is his first full length work of poetry, and is part lament of what is and part longing for what will be. It really is a powerful deep dive into his perspective on the events of and leading up to 2020. So, if you haven’t already, make sure you grab a copy of We Sang a Dirge. Well, in this podcast, he even reads one of his poems, [’20 00:01:19] to us, and you won’t want to miss that. So, join the conversation and let’s listen. So, how have you guys been? How has pandemic life been for you guys?
Lo Alaman:
It’s been interesting. So, my wife is pregnant currently.
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, congratulations.
Lo Alaman:
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. We’re about to have our second kid. The biggest frustration, I guess, with the whole pandemic is, it’s made the process of having a child kind of crazy. So, I can’t go to appointments, like seriously, and even when we have the baby, I’m able to be in the delivery room, but we can’t have a doula, and my wife has to give birth with a mask on. So, it’s totally weird.
Lo Alaman:
We also just moved… At the top of the pandemic, we moved in March, and so the transition in the middle of quarantine has just been really strange for us. Good things have been happening in it. We have built some community, and obviously, we’re having a kid, so we’re excited about that. And so, definitely, they’ve been blessing. In everything, God’s hand is on. A lot of things had our hands in, and so we’re excited about that stuff. It’s also been weird. It’s been weird.
Heidi Wilcox:
It’s a weird time. For me, I found it has both been hard, and like you said, there’s been some good things at the same time as well. I feel like the pandemic is an app running in the background, so everything else I do, I’m kind of like, it’s just always ever present there, making life a little more difficult.
Lo Alaman:
That’s a really good analogy. That’s a really good analogy.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. So, I watched the wedding poem that you-
Lo Alaman:
Oh, boy.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, oh, my gosh, it was beautiful.
Lo Alaman:
Thanks. [crosstalk 00:03:02].
Heidi Wilcox:
It went viral. I was just like, “Wow, you really set the bar for guys everywhere.”
Lo Alaman:
[inaudible 00:03:13] I guess. It was a special moment for us. We had no idea it was going to do that. It was super special.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. How does it feel to have a moment that was that special and that intimate between you and your wife, kind of become out there for the public?
Lo Alaman:
It’s not as significant now. When it first happened, it was kind of crazy. We didn’t know what was going to happen. We didn’t pay for a videographer. There just happened to be a guy there with a camera because one of Erica’s aunts was sick, and so he just happened to be recording it. When we went to our honeymoon, we were kind of just hanging out and just chilling, we were in Puerto Rico, and my mom kept calling. And I was like, “Hey, we’re trying to just hang out here and do the whole honeymoon thing,” and she was like, “You have to get on Facebook right now, your video has gone viral.” And I’m like, “Mom, you don’t even know what viral is.” But I ended up checking to see what she was talking about.
Lo Alaman:
And I think at the time, it had 2 million views, ended up [crosstalk 00:04:16] 17 million over Facebook and YouTube, and all this crazy stuff, and celebrities were reposting it, and I was like, “What in the world is happening?” So, it was a lot of shock on the front end of it. About a few months passed by and you realize that the whole quote, unquote going viral thing is not as big of a deal [crosstalk 00:04:37]. It was cool that… We had prayed and asked God, we want our wedding to be just helpful, and to be worshipful, and to give a different perspective on what dating or being married could look like. And He kind of did that, and that was really cool. And so, we were excited about it, and it was really fun. But the whole celebrity, viralness, that’s kind of superficial, it doesn’t really matter.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. I hear you. So, how did you and your wife meet?
Lo Alaman:
We actually met in seventh grade?
Heidi Wilcox:
No way.
Lo Alaman:
Yes. I moved to Mississippi seventh grade, she had moved to Mississippi… I want to say when she was two months old or something like that, but neither of us were born in the South. I was born in California, she was born in Jersey, and we moved there when we were pretty young. And then, went to the same school, seventh grade, she left… I think her house had a house fire, so she had moved away. And then, she came back in high school, and we started dating then, and kind of dated through college off and on. By the time I had enough money to get married, I was like, “I’m going to go ahead and lock this down before she realizes she could do better.” And yeah, it’s been awesome since.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. When did you guys get married?
Lo Alaman:
We got married in December of 2015. So, we’re coming up on five years in a couple of weeks.
Heidi Wilcox:
Wow, that’s a big milestone.
Lo Alaman:
It is. It kind of felt like it went fast, but it also felt like so much life was in those five years, it seemed longer than that for some reason.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, I hear you. Because my husband and I got married in 2017, so-
Lo Alaman:
Nice.
Heidi Wilcox:
… we’re three and a half years right now. And it feels long, but also, I don’t feel like I’ve ever been doing life any other way.
Lo Alaman:
Exactly.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. You said you guys moved at the beginning of March, so what are you guys doing now?
Lo Alaman:
So, while we were moving, while we were still in San Antonio… We had moved to Texas in 2017. My wife was in grad school, and she actually finished up in May of this year. So, she was doing grad school during the move, which was kind of crazy.
Heidi Wilcox:
Wow. And moving in at the start of the pandemic it was not crazy enough.
Lo Alaman:
I know. And being pregnant. It was a whole thing. So, she is working in her degree, she’s the Health and Wellness Educator for the Montgomery County Food Bank. And then, I was working on staff at a church doing college ministry. And when we came out here, I started working for Harvest at The Woodlands UMC as the Community Life Minister.
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, wow, that’s awesome. So, what does that mean? What do you do as a community life minister?
Lo Alaman:
Yeah. Basically, trying to make our worshiping community feel more like a discipling community. And so, we have home groups, which is our small group ministry. And so, I get to coordinate that, and train our leaders, and write curriculum for our home group ministry. I also run our podcast, to basically have conversations about how we do the stuff in the Sermon in our actual community, in our actual day to day lives. And then, I also get to preach pretty consistently, which is super fun for me. Yeah. And then, they have this ambiguity in the job description to where it’s always like, whatever else we throw on your plate as well. So, there’s that.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Other tasks as assigned.
Lo Alaman:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. But in addition to all of that, you’re also a spoken word poet. I believe I’m right, you’re publishing your first book of poems on December 3?
Lo Alaman:
Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. It’s pretty cool, and weird at the same time, but it’s cool.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. So, I want to talk about We Sang a Dirge, you wrote all of it in 2020, is that right?
Lo Alaman:
The bulk of it, yeah. There’s a handful of poems in there that I had kind of had, that I kind of tweaked for this project, but the bulk of it, I would say about 80% of it was all written during this time.
Heidi Wilcox:
I feel like that’s an amazing timeframe. How did these pieces come together?
Lo Alaman:
I mean, we moved right at the top of the pandemic, and that was in March. We didn’t know this at the time but Ahmaud Arbery was killed in February, February 23, weeks after Breonna Taylor, and then weeks after or months after it was George Floyd. And so, that was a weird climate of just unrest and racial tension that kind of spurred up, had been there for a while, but had spurred up during the pandemic, because I think, everybody was in front of their phones, you kind of couldn’t get away from some of the video footage, and it was on everybody’s heart and everybody’s minds.
Lo Alaman:
A strange part about that is we had just moved out of our community, and so I’m in a new community, predominately white community. And so, I didn’t really know the context I was in, and if I could be honest and vulnerable about some of the things I was carrying as a black person receiving all of this news, and then seeing the responses of other people, particularly the Evangelical Church, whether they were in agreement or in apathy. And so, I didn’t feel like my church was the safest place to wear all the things I was feeling. Not that my church is racist at all, it was just new, I didn’t know who they were.
Lo Alaman:
And so, I practice journaling and writing poetry just between me and God as a way of just meeting with Him. And writing during that time was just super cathartic and super just helpful to get all of my emotions out, and to just be present with the Lord in it. And in doing so, I found out I wrote a lot. I ended up sharing one of the poems, and a good friend of mine, J. D. Walt had reached out and was like, “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have more poems like that?” And I was like, “Dude, you have no idea, it’s all I’ve been [crosstalk 00:10:26] lately.”
Lo Alaman:
And so, we just sat down and had a conversation about how potentially this could be a helpful thing for some people. And just from there, taking all the stuff I had been writing, and then being more intentional about, how do we express and wrestle with all of these things from a biblical hope lens? It was super helpful for me in my journey, and my prayer is that it’s helpful for other people. And so, that’s how the book came about.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure. So, We Sang a Dirge, like I’ve said, it comes out December 3, and it’s a book of poems centered on the events that you’ve just talked about, events in 2020, the racial unrest, the protest, the politics, the pandemic, and police brutality. So, why did you decide to use poetry as your vehicle to share your perspective?
Lo Alaman:
Yeah. I think as a poet, I tend to live in several worlds. One of those worlds is this kind of artsy, creative space, that for me, I’m able to receive information, not so much from the lens of argument, or from the lens of debate, it’s simply expression, it’s simply giving voice to what’s being experienced and felt. I’ve noticed that when I bring that context to the church world, or even some of these kind of issues that have been politicized, there tends to be much more hostility towards it. And I noticed that a lot of people aren’t really comfortable having the conversation about race and the issues that we’re currently seeing, because it always feels like we are trying to win an argument, and wield the facts against each other.
Lo Alaman:
What’s been awesome for me, and I think God intentionally does in Scripture, because there’s art and poetry all throughout Scripture, is that God is inviting us to engage our imaginations and our emotions, not just our opinions, right? And so, that experience of lament and pain, I don’t really have a bunch of facts as to how I feel, what I feel in the moment. Now we can study history, we can read a lot, we can understand more information about the context that we live in, what creates these systems, but I think all of that is what you do after you’re on board for the journey of empathizing, and of leaning into compassion.
Lo Alaman:
If you’re not in that place yet, or if you’re so bogged down in that place that you forget to empathize with your brother and sister, if it becomes so much the narrative of us versus them, that you forget to see people as a neighbor, I think we lose something about the kingdom of God, that demands that we see each other as one in the Body of Christ. And so, what I wanted to do was express how the body was hurting, and I felt like poetry was the best way to do that. I talk a lot for a living, I use a bunch of words, and I just felt like I’ve done a good enough job, or at least I’m tired of doing the job of expressing more facts and opinions about things, as opposed to inviting people to feel what I think the black community is feeling.
Lo Alaman:
I was [crosstalk 00:13:19] conversation with a brother of mine who is a black guy, and I shared one of the poems with him, and he was like, “Man, that’s something that I felt too and just didn’t always have words for.” And so, a part of it is, I want my white brothers and sisters, or anybody who is not within this context to empathize and to have some understanding. At the same time, when Jesus says, “We sang a dirge,” He’s using a parable in Matthew to talk about what the kingdom of God is like. And some of the poems are this invitation to lament, but other poems in the parable that Jesus gives is, it’s children singing a happy song as well, and inviting us to dance.
Lo Alaman:
And so, I think I want to empathize with my brothers and sisters who are in a marginalized community, to remind us that yet things are difficult, and there’re real frustrations, and I don’t want to pacify that, but I do want to invite us to see hope. And the hope of the gospel is that God is for us, if He’s for us, then who can be against? And so, yeah, I think that for me, poetry was just kind of like [inaudible 00:14:15] because I love to do it, and I write it anyway, it seemed like a natural vehicle to just help people have some conversation, and really wrestle with some of this stuff in a place of empathy.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure. I know listening to your work on YouTube and stuff like that, I heard the truth of situations and truth of the gospel in ways that I hadn’t experienced before. And it really helped me understand better and evoked emotions in me that I didn’t realize were there. I would read things… Because I read your book, [Kailyn 00:14:49] was kind enough to send me a preview of your book.
Lo Alaman:
That’s cool.
Heidi Wilcox:
I read that and I was like, “Wow, this is really moving, and helps me understand things that I have no way to understand on my own.” And so, how do you see the intersection of art and faith?
Lo Alaman:
I think it’s necessary, I think that there’s been such a… I hate to critique our culture a lot, but by and large, our worship music is going to consist of the same four chords, that’s kind of a thing we do. By and large, when we think about art or creativity, it’s typically as an accompaniment to Bible study. As post-enlightenment, we care a lot about understanding and having intellect, and I think all that’s perfect, and then got moves within our reason. But I also feel like there’s been a bit of a way that there’s… We’ve kind of atrophied our appreciation for beauty, and kind of atrophied our appreciation for storytelling, which is a big part of Jesus’s ministry. He told a lot of parables, which are just extended metaphors, it’s like it’s poetic. Because He wants us to connect our hearts to deeper truths.
Lo Alaman:
And we have a bit of a hindrance in our culture to where we think that truth equals facts, and I think it’s always the case. I think, for Jesus, facts point to truth, and facts can assist in helping us see a truth. But the reality is, that Jesus says He’s the truth. I think that for me, there’s a huge need within the church for more artists and more creatives to help us see parts of God that are only seen through that lens. Again, a third of the Bible is poetry, which means that God recognizes that there’s literary art, is how He wants to reveal Himself, right? And so, He chooses to reveal Himself, and He is the word. And the way He chooses to reveal Himself is through art. It stands to reason that He wants to communicate to us beyond just how He’s a rationale. But He wants to communicate to our emotions too, and so I think… Yeah.
Lo Alaman:
There’s a way in which I think God has gifted a lot of us in this kind of creative realm, but the church hasn’t always had space for it. And it’s a sad thing, and hopefully, it’s something that we can kind of work towards just creating space for more art and more creativity, because I think it’s necessary, especially with this new generation of people who are so visually attuned and are really deeply… A whole generation that’s deeply invested in art. We, as a church, kind of have to be able to speak our gospel, same truth, the same gospel, same word, in a way in which our culture can currently experience it.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure. One of the things I also noticed about your work is, your love for Jesus is super obvious, and it seems super fresh and active and alive. So, I’d love to hear a little bit about how you met Jesus, and then how you keep your faith active and alive in a way that’s so real that in what you write, it’s just there.
Lo Alaman:
Yeah. Well, I met Jesus as a scrub. I was totally a… I was a mess. And I think the way my faith stays active is that there’s some areas that I’m still just a huge mess, that’s why I need Him.
Heidi Wilcox:
I would say we’re all messes, it’s just I think, realizing it and acknowledging it, and being like, “Okay, I’m bringing that part of me to Jesus.”
Lo Alaman:
Preach that, fam. Come on. [crosstalk 00:18:13]. So, I was kind of like most folks in the South, I was raised in the church. It wasn’t that people explained Jesus well at the time, not to me anyway, it was just like, this is what we do. Every Monday we have choir practice. Every Wednesday we have midweek devotion. Every Thursday, if we’re not in revival, we have drill team practice. And then, on Sunday, we’re in church, probably, a few times a day. It’s just what you do. And at some point in time, I was just like, “I don’t love this. This is more ritualistic that I don’t necessarily care for.” And then, the church that I came from, there was a lot of hypocrisy, which wasn’t always fun to see.
Lo Alaman:
And so, yeah, growing up in that context, the moment I was not forced to go and went to college, I didn’t go [crosstalk 00:18:59]. Was kind of a typical college kid, I’m going to go and do my own thing now. And yeah, I totally screwed up my first year of school. This was really empty, and was hurting, and had not dealt with a lot of trauma within my own life, and hadn’t dealt with a lot of pain and just anger that I was holding on to. And so, while I’m in summer school, there’s not a lot of folks on campus, and I’m just kind of there by myself, except for those handful of people who were still on campus, that I wanted community, I wanted to hang out with them, and so I did life with them.
Lo Alaman:
And they just happened to be a bunch of artists, and they just happened to be followers of Jesus. And I started doing life with this little community that was… I’m so thankful for it now, though I didn’t have language for it back then. I think it was prevenient grace that God putting people in my path and giving me windows into His heart, and windows into what a biblical community can look like. And then, doing life with brothers and sisters, that was just really cool. So, I started doing life with some people that are really dope, and I’m writing in this context, I’m being encouraged and lifted up in this context, I’m learning to pray in this context, I feel like God speaks to me in a weird, charismatic kind of way. Not to weird you out, but it was a thing for me.
Lo Alaman:
Yeah. There was no denying that Christ was who He said He was, and that the word He was saying to me is I’m loved by Him, that God’s calling me His son, which is like, what the heck? Because that was beautiful. What I instantly felt a need to is to share this. And so, within the church that I grew up in, there was not a space to say, “Oh, be an artist.” Also, Christian rap was super cheesy at the time, I wasn’t really [crosstalk 00:20:39]. So, instead, I was like, “Well, I’ll do the whole preaching thing.” And so, I started doing ministry in that context, and I would share poems whenever I had a chance to, and it was really cool.
Lo Alaman:
And I eventually got offered an internship at a church in Mississippi in Tupelo, actually, and they just brought me on and allowed me to do life with them and see a different way of doing ministry. And they poured into me and discipled me, and gave me opportunities that I was so not qualified for. But they let me mess up, and let me figure it out. And I am forever grateful for those people. And so, doing that with that church and having opportunities with that church and different churches, it kind of just turned into being a thing, a vocational thing, like, holy cow, I get my money for it.
Lo Alaman:
And so, yeah, it was a really cool season, especially when we got married. My wife was in grad school again, so we were just able to kind of travel around and experience different camps and churches and conferences, and this like, whoa, the kingdom of God is way bigger than my small 30 member congregation back in my hometown.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure.
Lo Alaman:
And seeing how God was inviting us to be a part of a really cool story that I again, don’t feel qualified for. I think it keeps me in a position of like, man, God if you don’t do it, it’s not going to happen. And so, yeah, there’s been awesome moments of growth, but those moments of growth have not eradicated the need for grace [crosstalk 00:22:09].
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure. So, was college the first time that you started writing?
Lo Alaman:
Nah, it’s not fair to say. I think, the first I wrote… I want to say I was in the third grade or fourth grade, there was a poetry competition in school and learned about it.
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, wow.
Lo Alaman:
I did it. It was probably a terrible poem, who knows? I wrote then. And around that same time is when 8 Mile came out, I don’t know if you remember 8 Mile with Eminem and-
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, no.
Lo Alaman:
Oh, man, it had a terrible impact on me. Don’t watch it, it’s a terrible movie. It was [crosstalk 00:22:42]. So, I watched 8 Mile, and I instantly wanted to be a rapper like any other kid. Then I go to middle school, and there’s rap battles in our school. And so, I would write raps. Man, I didn’t know this at the time, but it’s poetry. It’s a intentional form where you are writing and using metaphor, and using simile, and using personification, and ton of phrase, and punch lines, to try to help connect the crowd to your meaning, and to your point.
Lo Alaman:
I didn’t realize how formative that was at the time, but it was super formative. Also, I was pretty hood, and so I was like, “Yeah, I’m building up this muscle to be able to connect with audiences.” So, yeah, I mean, that was a thing way, way back, in the way back, and I think God just kind of repurposed and redeemed it to where I was no longer talking about things that weren’t healthy or good.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, He has a way of doing that, for sure.
Lo Alaman:
He’s kind of good at it. It’s kind of his thing.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, it really is. And We Sang a Dirge in the foreword of it, I believe it was, you write that after George Floyd was killed, that you had a hard time keeping your phone charged, because of all the calls and texts that you weren’t getting. As you were talking to the people who were calling you, what did you hope to share with people through the crisis?
Lo Alaman:
Yeah, a couple of things. I think for most folks in the black community, I say most folks, I almost want to say all, these aren’t new conversations. And the beauty of this year is that there are more folks who are willing to have these conversations, and more folks who are willing to wrestle with it. The reality of it is though, is that this is not a new phenomena, that there has been a weird way in which black people have been policed in this country since its inception. There has been a way in which the church has not always known how to find itself on the right side of those conversations, it’s been a thing for a while. And there has been hope, and there has been progress, and there has been changed. But again, the signs of growth don’t eradicate the need for grace. It’s been an ongoing thing, not just within our own personal lives, but I think it’s throughout the church.
Lo Alaman:
Just because we’ve grown in an area doesn’t mean we don’t need God to continue growing us and shaping us. And so, I think for me, the main thing I wanted to communicate with people is that I am so thankful, I’m so thankful that we are willing to wrestle with this in any context, but the way in which we wrestle is important. And this is a thing for a lot of black people, I found out that I was the only black friend for a lot of white folks because they kept reaching out to me, as opposed to… It just seemed like I was the only person representing this kind of issue within our circles. And the conversation was so typically, I’m sorry for you, as opposed to I’m grieving, because this is a problem within us.
Lo Alaman:
It seemed like the narrative was, these are black problems and black issues, as opposed to these are our problems and our issues. And even that language, I think, is kind of telling of where our hearts typically are when it comes to some of these narratives. That language of black church and white church, or black issues, or white issues, totally goes against Jesus’s narrative of loving your neighbor as yourself.
Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lo Alaman:
For neighbors, the problems in my community are also in your community, it’s not my problem, it’s our problem. And so, I think a lot of… The heart behind my message was, how do we see George Floyd as a brother before we see him as a savior of any sort, or we see him as a martyr of any sort, or we see him as a villain, or some of that weird narrative of he had it coming, all that weird stuff that was happening in the political realm, people trying to use a black person’s death to validate their points? As opposed to saying… And this is our brother, then we have to first start by just grieving, the dude’s dead. And the tragedy of the image of God being robbed and stripped of life and dignity like that, that’s worth grieving.
Lo Alaman:
And so, people rushing to arguments before having that moment to grieve, or people rushing to pacify pain, as opposed to lamenting with people, my hope was, helping people see these issues, not just his but all of these issues as, if we value the image of God, and we value the essence of life and the Spirit [inaudible 00:27:08] of God in our lives, if we value that, then we should value it when it’s alive and breathing, and celebrate that, and when it’s not, that’s when we mourn, that’s when we lament.
Lo Alaman:
That’s the children crying out in the marketplace, singing this sad song, what is your response to that? It should be grief before its argument. So, most of my conversations were trying to humanize the issue, and then point to Christ as a hope, and Christ as an answer, because everything else tends to fall short of humanity.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. How has your perspective changed since we first heard about these events and you wrote We Sang a Dirge until now?
Lo Alaman:
I think the biggest change for me has kind of shifted from what I expect outcomes to be. I think my motivation is still the same. I still hope that people would see the image of God in people, that they would value human life. But I think when I started having conversations with folks, I got so much farther just sitting down with people and being across from a table, or even because of COVID, being on Zoom with someone. As long as we could be face to face and talk about stuff, I think we can go far. We can get way further in a conversation between two people, as opposed to in the comment sections on Facebook, or Twitter.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes, definitely. Yeah.
Lo Alaman:
And so, when I wrote the book, I was thinking, oh, this will be great. I’ll write a book, and I’ll just try to solve all the problems through this poetic lens. What I was convicted by, as well as encouraged by is that, if progress and growth and empathy happens when we’re across from a table from one another, then the book’s goal should not be to answer all the problems, the book’s goal should be to get people in front of each other.
Lo Alaman:
And so, my expectations for outcome is, I don’t think I’m going to write away all the problems in a heart. My hope would be that I grow empathy within people on both sides of an argument. As that empathy happens, it becomes a bridge that leads us to a place of having conversation and dialogue, and healthy disagreement, if it’s that, but also seeing where oneness and unity could happen through the grace of Christ.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. In many of your poems, you write candidly about the church’s complicity in systemic racism, and bodies that are too homogenous in their worship. And we even talked about this just a little bit already in our conversation. What do you think the church’s role is in combating this issue? And how can we as Christians move forward?
Lo Alaman:
Yeah, I think we all have some cues that we get from Scripture. I think a lot of those cues that we take, if they’re taken in their context, make a lot of sense, and they’re perfect. But if we take them out of their context, and we kind of put our agenda on top of them, they’re totally broken. So, I heard a lot of folk kind of lean into Galatians where Paul talks about, “There’s no more slave, we’re free. There’s no Jew or Gentile, no male or female.” And a lot of folks have used that to say, “Well, the church’s role should be to turn a blind eye to all of the issues and just look at all of us as one race, one ethnicity, everything else is problematic.” But when you read Paul, you find out that he thinks there’s a very distinct role between male and female, in some ways, more than some of us do.
Lo Alaman:
He thinks that there is a difference between Jew and Gentile. You read Romans and he talks about how the Jewish people had a truth that they already held on to. And so, he’s not saying that ethnicity isn’t a thing, or that sexuality and gender is not a thing, what he’s saying is, not a call for sameness, but a call for oneness, that we are one in Christ. And I think the church has often tried to make a need for sameness with our homogenous worship. If you’re black, you worship in a black church, if you’re Hispanic in a Hispanic church, if you’re white, you’re in a white church. Or if we go in ministry and evangelize, we start to try to bring parts of our culture in to change the culture of the people, as opposed to seeing how God can redeem and use those cultures.
Lo Alaman:
And so, I think there’s a huge need for the church to respond to this call for oneness, not sameness. Oneness looks like, if you’re grieving, I agree with you. We don’t even have to have the same problems, we don’t even have to have the same opinions about those problems, or the same opinions about the solutions, but if we’re one, then your burdens are my burdens, and we bear one another’s burdens like Galatians 6:2, right? I’m grieving with you. Because I think [inaudible 00:31:30]. I think that there is a way in which we have characterized black worship and white worship, and all that weirdness, and the idea behind our praise being divided is so foreign to the way of Jesus. The way of Jesus invites all of us to come to Him. Anybody who’s broken and weary qualifies for rest, that’s kind of Jesus’s thing.
Lo Alaman:
So, any of us who are broken and weary, we qualify for grace, we qualify for worship. Then what He invites us to, is to bring that worship to Him who is worthy of it. And so, if my appreciation and my gratitude, my thankfulness, lead me to the heart of the Father, and He’s leading your heart in the same place, then eventually, we should cross paths. My hope is that the church leans into this idea of oneness. I think the idea of oneness over sameness, it looks more like the kingdom of God. I think it’s messy, I think it’s hard-
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, definitely.
Lo Alaman:
Yeah, I think it’s going to make for some really uncomfortable conversations, and it’s going to show us that we’ve probably valued things that are not of value to God, or at least not in the same way. I think it’s going to call for us to lay down some golden calves. But I think it leads somewhere that’s healthier. It leads towards a united body in Christ, which I think is what we are all longing for.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure. How can we start having or continue to have… Because I’m hoping people are already doing this. How can we continue to have these conversations? What should they look like? How can we do this well?
Lo Alaman:
Yeah, I don’t know. [crosstalk 00:33:02]. My favorite thing about being an artist is I get to say I don’t know a lot, and to be okay with it. Because I think it’s going to look different for different people, it’s going to look different for different contexts. I think it can look different for different issues, and that’s okay. So, I don’t have a cookie cutter answer to say, “Oh, it has to look like this.” If you are a white person, you’ve probably heard, “Your posture should be just to listen during this time.” And in some ways, I appreciate that and respect that idea, but I think that creates a bit of a dynamic where all the answers are supposed to come from those who are in the struggling communities, and I think it’s a bit unfair.
Lo Alaman:
I think that maybe listening is helpful, but that’s not what a conversation is, it involves listening and talking, giving and taking. And so, I don’t know what that looks like for you as an individual. What I do know is, that’s the work of Jesus. The Holy Spirit… Jesus in John 14, “The Spirit is going to lead you and guide you into all truth.” And so, it’s not going to be the work of study, it’s not going to be the work of leadership, it’s not going to be the work of any of that stuff, it’s going to be the work of the Spirit guiding us and leading us into places of truth. That was different for different folks. That looks harder and that looks really challenging, and it’s more messy, and it’s not as… There’s no curriculum for it, which we like curriculum.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, definitely. I’m kind of like, “Tell me how I should do something, and I will do my best to go do that.”
Lo Alaman:
Yeah. But I wish it was that simple, but it’s not. It is really crazy. So, we have my two year old, almost, and then we have a boy on the way in, and I’m blown away by how quickly they hand you a human life with no instruction. No manual, here’s the human, go with it. And I have to go through more training to have a car, I have to go through more training to have a license, and yet I’m entrusted with a human life, and I’m expected to raise it, and there’s no one way to do it, and there’s no manual to do it. I think Pinterest helps with that, [crosstalk 00:35:02] ideas. But there’s no manual. And I think the things like that, actually doing life, they’re harder, they’re messier, and there is no curriculum for it.
Lo Alaman:
But it’s a journey. I think this is also a journey. I think it’s an invitation to do life with people, to love neighbors well, and there is no format. But there’s a path, and according to Jesus a narrow one. And so, I think He invites, I think He calls. And I don’t know exactly what that looks like for individual people, but just wrestling is a starting point, just lamenting, just grieving, just mourning with each other, that’s the starting point. And if we can do that, then every one of our efforts is going to go off somewhere.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure. So, your book invites us to, as you were saying, lament, to empathize with others, and to kind of maybe feel and see some of their experiences. And poets are sometimes referred to as prophets. Do you feel this way about your work and your writing?
Lo Alaman:
I think so. I think that… So, on some nerdy stuff, I think of 1 Samuel 9:9, where it talks about how they were looking for the prophet of the day, and they went to go find the seers because the prophets of the day were called seers, people who saw the world from a different vantage point. I think that’s all poetry and art is, it’s just seeing the same thing through a different lens. And what I hope to do with my art and my preaching, or just my life, is to help just people see Jesus more clearly, and help to see His love all around. There’s a line on one of my poem that says, “All around me are your gifts, and all around them are your fingerprints.” Wanting to be able to see my life as blessed as it actually is, and also to see that all the good and perfect gifts in my life come from Him, that’s a hard issue, but it’s also how we see things.
Lo Alaman:
And so, my hope is that I can help to create a bit of a new perspective on some of these issues, to not make them as political as I think our culture wants to make them. I don’t really care if you like the Electric Slide, I don’t really care if you like two-stepping, or country music, whatever your preference is, that falls on you. My hope is that we can see these as discipleship issues. How do I value the image of God? How do I love my neighbor as myself? How do I love God with all my heart, mind and strength? And from the overflow of that love, that’s what I carry to my brother and sister. Those are discipleship conversations.
Lo Alaman:
The fact that race has been created, which is a thing we don’t often think about, but there’s ethnicity all over Scripture, there’s no such thing as race in Scripture. And so, the idea that racial tensions have been created to distract us from loving our neighbors, that’s what makes the discipleship issue. It’s not an issue because it’s ugly, there’s a lot of ugly things in the world. The discipleship piece of it is, it’s blocking me from connecting my heart to the Father, and loving my neighbor as myself. That’s what I care about us getting on board for. And so, if I can help people see that, then I will gladly wear the badge of it being prophetic.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Because you’re telling us about something but calling us to a different way of being too.
Lo Alaman:
Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. That’s beautiful. But you are also inviting us into lament and grieving. Why do you think that lament, the biblical definition… Well, first of all, I guess we should… I was starting to talk about the biblical definition of lament, what is the biblical definition of lament? And then, why is that important?
Lo Alaman:
Yeah. So, lament, I think, is often given a bad rep. [crosstalk 00:38:41] is like whining?
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.
Lo Alaman:
But that’s not what it is. In fact, there’s an entire movement of people… And I’m not going to name them or [inaudible 00:38:53] they’re wrong or bad. But there’s a kind of name it and claim it version of the gospel to where we can only speak positive good things. And if you speak negative thing, it somehow betrays your faith in God. When in actuality, God tells us to cast our cares to Him because He deeply cares for us. He even says, Matthew 5:4, “Blessed are those that mourn, because they shall receive comfort.” There’s this comfort from the Father when we give Him our grief. He’s not just asking us to fake it till we make it, name it and claim it, act like everything is good when it’s not. But the invitation from the Father is to give Him our brokenness, to give Him all the places where we’re hurting.
Lo Alaman:
And so, biblical lament, is not whining, biblical lament is this mourning that has confidence and comfort. It’s giving God our confession of brokenness with the hope that He has an expectation to do something different above circumstances that we’re in. Biblical lament is not housed in this idea that God has gone astray, but it’s always rooted in the fact that we have gotten off the mark, and that only God that’s going to bring us back. And so, the idea of biblical lament… As you’ve been seeing within our culture right now, there’s been so many campaigns to go and vote, there has been such a call to go out and be involved, get active in creating a solution. Biblical is that, it’s asking God for a solution. But it’s not doing, it’s saying, “Hey God, we’re going to cast in our chips, and you’re going to do for us what you’re supposed to do.” We’re lamenting that we have gone astray, we have made a mistake, and we are trusting that you are the one that can fix it.
Lo Alaman:
How long Lord? Is a phrase that’s repeated all throughout Scripture. It’s grieving, saying, “Lord, this kingdom right here, it’s not the kingdom that you promised. This condition, this world that we find ourselves in, it’s not the world that you want.” And we confess that we’re the ones that have gone astray with it, and so we ask, “Lord, when will your promise come and be made evident in our lives?” And that hope is actually worshipful, that we trust that God is good enough to bring things back in order, and we trust that He is the only solution. It’s confession, it’s hurting, it’s painful, but it’s also a form of worship, placing our hope in its right place.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, definitely. What can the black community teach us about lament?
Lo Alaman:
Well, I think there has been some weird ways in which Scripture has kind of been taken advantage of, and abused. I think of slave owners who would intentionally misquote Scripture, or leave out certain parts of the text, or use it to justify their agenda. And what they would do is, they would read themselves into the text in a position that they were not actually in. Somehow-
Heidi Wilcox:
A dangerous thing to do.
Lo Alaman:
A very dangerous thing to do. But somehow the white brother and sister way back in the gap found themselves as the person of Israel, who God was making all these promises to, and that resulted in Manifest Destiny, and oh, this person should be my slave, and the curse of Ham, all that weird language that had absolutely nothing to do with their context. It was reading themselves in a poor way of seeing themselves in Scripture. Well, I think the black heritage has long known how to do, is how to properly find yourself in the story. That when you are the oppressed, and the marginalized, you empathize, and you relate to the stories of the oppressed and the marginalized in Scripture.
Lo Alaman:
And so, God’s promise of deliverance is not a promise of, everything’s going to go your way. His promise of deliverance is, if you are oppressed, you have hope because your God has not abandoned you. I think that that idea of feeling the tension of the day, and reading yourself in the biblical passages the way you’re supposed to be, is a practice that the black heritage did for a long time. Seeing ourselves in the story, and then reacting in a proper, proper way. And so, I think what all of us can kind of learn from the black experience is how to endure with a proper perspective. That if God was faithful to deliver His people before, He will be faithful to deliver His people again.
Lo Alaman:
That is a hope that we can point to and cling to, because He’s done it before with the children of Israel, He’s done it before within the black church, and the black community, and I believe He’ll do it now. That we, as a people, if we are called by His name and humble ourselves, and seek His face, and we pray, He’ll hear from heaven, He’ll heal our land, that’s a promise that was true for His people. And so, the black church began to sing that, and to praise that, and to celebrate around that, and our culture being built around, all of our music reflected it, our ways of gathering reflected it. The whole idea of, we shall overcome some day was a chant in the black community that was stemmed from the Gospels.
Lo Alaman:
And so, I think what we learn is, biblical hope and endurance comes from believing that God was faithful to do it before, and He could do it again. I think we all can learn from that. In the moments we feel personal and individual despair, when our personal lives are… Whether they’re falling apart, or when as a collective, as a community, we’re experiencing brokenness, or we’re disoriented, we can know that God has been faithful, and He will continue to faithful.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. I love your words about how lament leads us to hope, or can lead us to hope. And it leads us right into the next question I was going to ask you about your poem, 20. So, before we talk about that, I was hoping that maybe you could read that for us.
Lo Alaman:
Yeah, for sure. For sure.
Heidi Wilcox:
Okay, awesome.
Lo Alaman:
All right. So, a little context, when I wrote this poem, I was really hoping that there’d be a vaccine sometime soon.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure.
Lo Alaman:
So, let’s sit in the poem knowing that eventually things will get better. I recognized that through the years. So, you talk about how my perspective has changed. My hope was that we’d be uncomfortable, inconvenienced, but then things would be better by the end of the summer. Actually, our church was planning on going back to in person worship in mid July, and that just did not happen. And so, I am so thankful for this poem, I love this poem, but this poem is challenging me in a lot of ways. Because even as I wrote it, I had an expectation for what God was going to do, and the poem has been gracious enough and was written in a way that it still matters now. So, even after the year of 2020, I think there’s still a hope that can be found in this poem.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.
Lo Alaman:
Hopefully, those things in this poem won’t be applicable in 2021, but we’ll see.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, I really hope not. I really just want things to change and return to some more normal life.
Lo Alaman:
Yeah, friend. Yeah, friend. I don’t want to write a poem called This is 2021.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.
Lo Alaman:
All right. Here we go. What a year, what a collection of weeks we’ve had to wade through. What day is it anymore? I admit I’ve lost track. Too busy keeping count of all the loved ones that I have not seen, they’re here, but they’re not. Distance only makes the heart grow colder. To be sheltered in our places surrounded by isolation, we’ve never seen a disease wreak havoc in so many different ways. Quarantine threatens to take what the virus can’t reach. We’re here, but we’re not. Been wearing hand-me-down smiles since last year. 2020 been generous with burdens, I don’t know how much more I can take. Depression is a hungry beast roaming freely, hard to keep convincing it that I am not a snack, hard to keep convincing this country that our skin is human, that my blood owes nothing to the ground, or water no seeds. Still we watch our life spill into a lamb, but don’t know how to call us miracles. Still watching our kin slain.
Lo Alaman:
Still young, with not enough trips around the sun to learn the nuance of seasons. We watch them turn to lifeless droughts, dust of lung scorning the inhale that never came, they claim they can’t breathe. We’re here but where are we? Is this the world we’ve known? Is there a normal that we can go back to? A place where peace still flows. Can it douse the fire of rage? Will hope condemn off the eyes and keep these tears from falling? Perhaps not. Perhaps there’s no normal for us to return to, but we can build one. Our desire for change firm as bricks are longing for community, the mortar. We’ll see graves turn to gardens, distance turn to runways, I miss you turn into glad your [inaudible 00:47:15] will call. This anguish, the flame that it is, we’ll use it.
Lo Alaman:
Is there anything that tries to divide us [inaudible 00:47:21]? We’ll brand ourselves in love. Hatred will not feel this fire. Night will come but darkness will not claim, our morning pain won’t claim this year. 2020 will be remembered, but we’ll decide what it’s remembered for. They’ll remember that we were here, that we didn’t fall apart, but we stood together in unity. They’ll remember that we were here. That we wouldn’t be silenced, but our voices became a catalyst for change. They’ll remember that we were here. We were here. We were here. And we brought a future with us.
Heidi Wilcox:
That’s beautiful. Thank you for sharing that with us, Lo.
Lo Alaman:
Thanks, friend.
Heidi Wilcox:
I mean, obviously, it’s many people’s… One of the ones that they really like. As I read through your work, that was one that especially resonated with me as well. And just, I love the beauty of the words of lament and sadness and hope, and looking for the promise of joy. So, thank you for that.
Lo Alaman:
Yeah. Thanks, friend. I really loved writing the poem. I think for me… So, in poetry, there’s something called the volta, where the poem turns. There were so many voltas that I wanted. I wanted [crosstalk 00:48:33] to be, yeah, but it’s all going to be good. We won’t have to worry about this anymore. And I don’t think that was the hope that God was giving me. The hope that He was giving me was, this year is going to be a thing. No matter what spin is put on it, everyone’s going to remember 2020.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yep.
Lo Alaman:
But the hope is that through Jesus, we can leave a different kind of mark on this year. And I think that pain is a thing to talk about and to be experienced. And the idea of isolation and being disconnected from those that we love and care about, that marks us. But I think what it has a space to do, is we can say that this was the year that we decided, we will never be distant again, that we’re going to lean into community, not lean away from it. That this year, if nothing else has taught me, that we need each other deeply, and that that need is something that we can continue to chase after.
Lo Alaman:
And so, yeah, I think the hope for me is that God is going to do something memorable in this year. My prayer is that He can use us to again be that prophetic voice, right? Help people to see Him in the middle of all of this, in the middle of all of this crazy, in the middle of all the confusion, that He is still near and dear to His people. So, yeah, it was a fun thing to write.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. How do you, and I guess how do we hang on to our hope in the midst of this time?
Lo Alaman:
Shameless plug, you can buy the book, that helps.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, yeah. And we’ll link it out in the show notes so that people can grab a copy of that.
Lo Alaman:
I think there’s something to be said about creating too, though. Because I feel like I can only have a real hope when I’m actually able to be real about the places where I’m hopeless. The hope just seems so superficial if I’m not really willing to see how deep my hopelessness goes. And so, there’s no betrayal of God in being honest about how hard things are, I think He actually invites that, He welcomes it, cast your cares upon Him. So, I think, the first thing I would say is, be real about where your despair is, don’t hide from it. Hope’s only going to go in the place where you’ve addressed your hopelessness, so be real about the place where you’re broken. I think this the starting point.
Lo Alaman:
The second thing I think, is again, leaning into what I think the black community has done for a long time is, is if you’ve seen… And there’s actually a song we have called… If I’ve seen you work in others, I believe you can work in me. That hope is connected to not things that God couldn’t do, but things that God has already done. And so, having a familiarity with Scripture, having a familiarity with how God has moved in the lives of His people, and trusting His character, that He’s not going to change. And so, I think those stories of God’s faithfulness are meant for moments like this when we feel like we’re struggling, it’s to remind us and to be an encouragement to us, that He is faithful, that He is good, and He has a plan for our lives. And so, I would say being honest about our despair, being familiar with God’s character of faithfulness.
Lo Alaman:
And the last thing I would say is, is being intentional to not do it by yourself. Hope is a thing that’s contagious, and so the more you’re around people who are rubbed up against hope, it rubs off on you. I think that Jesus does a good job of balancing time alone in isolation and being in the wilderness, but then always coming back and doing life, and connecting, and doing community. And so, there’s a way in which we’re not designed to be alone, and I think hope doesn’t live in isolation. So, yeah, I would just encourage people, be honest about what you’re wearing, be familiar with how God has been faithful before, and then do life with people that encourage and stir hope inside of you.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, definitely. Even just hearing that is super encouraging to me, so I appreciate those words. Before we wrap up the podcast, we have one question that we ask everybody. But before we do that, is there anything else you’d like to say that we haven’t already talked about?
Lo Alaman:
[inaudible 00:52:18] just say I’m thankful for what this experience has been both with writing the book, but also being able to have conversations like this. It’s been super cool to see… Not to be crass or anything, but there’s a lot of white folks I’ve been talking to lately who are just so for the idea of neighboring and bearing one another’s burdens. I know we have not figured it all out as a church, but I’m so thankful that the church is growing. And the idea [inaudible 00:52:44] the church has made mistakes before, is not something we shy away from, but we kind of look to and say, “Yeah, that’s part of growing pains.” Not saying it’s perfect, but thankfully, I’ve been stirred to hope lately, in having these kind of conversations, to see people who are willing to grow. And so, I’m super thankful for you, and for your listeners for bringing about the conversation.
Heidi Wilcox:
Aww, thank you.
Lo Alaman:
So, yeah, I’m super thankful, and I’m just praying that hope comes from this stuff. So, [crosstalk 00:53:12].
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. I really liked what you said that a lot of white people think their posture should be listening right now, that really spoke to me, because that’s what I thought that my posture should be. But your word’s about it being a conversation and a give and take, and kind of letting all the struggle rest with the group of people who are already struggling. I was like, “Wow, I had not thought about it that way.”
Lo Alaman:
[crosstalk 00:53:40].
Heidi Wilcox:
So, I really appreciated that. That was super helpful to me.
Lo Alaman:
[crosstalk 00:53:45].
Heidi Wilcox:
It also reminded me of poetry in general, because… I don’t know a ton about poetry, but I know that poetry has… There’s a rhythm and a meter with built in pauses, so it kind of… I don’t know, I could be way off base, so you can correct me on this. But the natural flow of poetry reminded me of how we should flow and relate to each other as we listen and do. Would you agree with that?
Lo Alaman:
Girl, preach that, come on. Yeah, I definitely do agree with that. I definitely [crosstalk 00:54:19] with that.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. As it relates to listening and stuff like that, how do you feel how listening and our rhythm kind of-
Lo Alaman:
So, no one pays me to come and listen, I typically am encouraged to come and talk. We have whole careers and industries about getting our word out, and we’ve learned to call us talking, communicating. What’s interesting about that… And this is like a Bible rant, but that word for communicate, that’s communion, right? How we commune with each other. And that I think is rooted even in our prayer lives, right? Our communication with God is typically, we say a bunch of stuff to Him and don’t let Him get a word in. But communication is that communing, it’s spending time, allowing that to be that give and take. And I do think that we have to recognize that… And this is a cool thing about poetry, right? Poetry is not limited to a rhythm, it points out where rhythm already is.
Lo Alaman:
And so, in your natural conversation, in your natural speech, you have a cadence when you talk. Beyond your tone of voice, someone could listen to you talking and know it’s you by your cadence, just how you naturally talk to people. And so, with poetry, it’s just being intentional with that cadence, and being intentional with that meter. I think there’s a natural way in which we have a cadence with God and with each other, that needs work.
Heidi Wilcox:
[crosstalk 00:55:41].
Lo Alaman:
To learn to listen more, but also not… Even if you go to a church service, right? You’re going to see people singing from the stage, and then somebody is going to talk to you for 30 minutes, and there’s no kind of give and take. That’s not really a space for discipleship. Discipleship happens when we’re communing, when we’re doing life together, when we’re sharing a meal, when we’re having conversation across the table.
Lo Alaman:
And so, yeah, I would just encourage anybody, don’t say things like, “I don’t have a culture, or I don’t have a cadence.” You have a culture. You have a cadence. But learning, how does our culture blend together with other cultures? And how do we intentionally do life beyond homogeny, and do life to where [inaudible 00:56:18] I have something to offer, but I also have much to learn and much to receive. When we find that, I’m going to go as far as saying something cheesy right here, I think it’s like poetry emotion, if we can learn to do that.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.
Lo Alaman:
Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure. Well, I lied, obviously. I said, I had one more question before the last one, and then I threw another one in there.
Lo Alaman:
I’m good. It’s good.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. So, now for the last question. Because the show is called The Thrive with Asbury Seminary Podcast, what is one practice, spiritual or otherwise, that is helping you thrive in your life right now?
Lo Alaman:
Journaling, easy. I wrote this whole thing out of a place of just spending time with God. We actually had just moved to this new church, and we were doing this midweek prayer because we couldn’t have in person worship, and so our folks were hoping to have more content. We said… We were thinking, oh, we’ll do this for a couple of weeks, and then we’ll be back in person, and then we just never went back in person.
Heidi Wilcox:
That’s what we all said.
Lo Alaman:
I know. I know. And so, I made it a point, every time we went into our worship space, to just journal. I like to sing. I like music and everything. But I really feel like my worship is being able to flesh out all this stuff. And sometimes, my journaling is just a journal entry. A lot of times, it’s poetry, but sometimes it’s not. It’s just writing out random things, questions, frustrations, praise, excitements.
Lo Alaman:
And so, journaling has been a huge thing for me. I feel like I’ve been learning to rest well, and then point out places where I’m still restless, just by putting it on paper. And I think God has been meeting me in that. I was talking to a friend who was saying, “Hey, once you write a book, start thinking about your next book.” And I’m like, “There’s absolutely no way I’m going to thinking about another book.” But then, I kept journaling, [inaudible 00:58:02] think about another book. So-
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, yeah. So, you’re working on one right now?
Lo Alaman:
I actually am, which is really ridiculous. All this is going to stop once I have my second kid, because I won’t be sleeping, and nobody wants to read that. But yeah, just trying to find consistent ways to meet with them, journaling has been a huge help.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure. Well, Lo, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your time, and your words, and your work. This conversation has been a gift to me and to all of us, and I really appreciate you.
Lo Alaman:
Aww, thanks, friend. Super thankful for you. Again, I appreciate you and all my other friends who are leading into the conversation during this time. I think God’s going to do some really good things in it. And that is how I hope this year is remembered.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure. Well, thank you.
Lo Alaman:
So, thank you, friend.
Heidi Wilcox:
Hey, you all, thank you so much for joining me for today’s conversation with Lo. His words are truly a gift to each of us, as they invite us into another’s experience with empathy, and call us to lament with hope. If you’d like, you can follow him on Instagram and Facebook @lothepoet, and tell him thanks so much for being part of The Thrive with Asbury Seminary Podcast. And of course, be sure to grab a copy of his new book that’ll release December the 3rd, We Sang a Dirge. We’ll link that out in the show notes so you can easily find an order copy for yourself today. As always, you can follow us in all the places on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @asburyseminary. Until next time, go do something that helps you thrive.
