What Macklemore Taught Me About Meaning and Jesus

I saw Macklemore & Ryan Lewis in Chicago last night. Their show being just one of the many concerts I’ve been to since leaving Houston for college. When go to a concert, I see artists on stage presenting their craft and know I am a witness of someone doing what they were made to do. A person who believes in something enough to share it with the world and submit themselves to public criticism is conducive to the intensity of sheer passion. With art, moments of unadulterated hope can be created. Something I forgot existed. 

After Macklemore’s show, I felt I had regained something lost. Due to a recent move from Houston, TX to Eureka, IL, I experienced a major paradigm shift which stripped me of all the beliefs I had once held dear. To give a bit of perspective, I moved to a town smaller than the high school I graduated from with nothing but cornfields for miles in every direction. Most people attend this college because it is close to their hometown and fairly a cheap education. You can only imagine what a big city girl who moved herself across the country felt like when I discovered this general mentality at orientation. When I lived in the city, I thrived on the energy and momentum of people who believed in things. People who knew they could take on the world and change big issues by staying true to their art and craft. In Houston, I was surrounded by so many humble individuals using their everyday passions to change things, and whose actions had an evident effect on the lives of so many people. The conversations with these innately incredible people changing the world seem almost distant now. Living in Nowhere, USA been such a determent to the hope I once held and been equal parts overwhelming and demoralizing. The latter being an experience filling the last several months with pain, depression and loneliness, and had me facing some serious questions about my faith regarding what is good and true.

As I have heard before, it is the people that make the places. So while, geographically, Eureka could very well be a contender for the most boring one-stoplight town on a map, the people I have encountered seem as equally telling of my inherent concerns. I fought through the inner battle these past several months, and realize how much moving to a small town has reared a perspective which hindered me from seeing the bigger picture. Every single day it takes everything in me to continue picking myself up and looking around to see what might be just beyond these cornfields. Last night was a reminder that there are people standing on stages to lead the masses from despair to hope. I remember a certain self-sacrificing Jewish Rabbi doing the same thing over two-thousand years ago. The world is moving in a positive direction, I stand firm in this fact. 

The moment Macklemore and Ryan Lewis took the stage an unsaid truth permeated the air acknowledging this music was celebrating something much bigger than two guys and their beats. The words, music, and the people present that night were celebrating truth. With Macklemore’s honesty and faithfulness to his art, he leads the way for a world that might be relentless in the pursuit of their very own art. Art which unveils the deeper reasons we live and unleashes the passions set fourth within us.