On the streets of the French Quarter in New Orleans, you’ll find your usual collection of street performers, artists, and fortune tellers. But late Saturday night on Frenchmen St., just off the Quarter, I spotted a new one for me: street poets. Clicking away on old manual typewriters, these peddlers of the written word will compose, for a fee, a personalized, one-of-a-kind poem.
Now, I’m one who loves a well-crafted collection of words. As odd as this may sound, an interesting sentence, a thought-provoking poem, and even a fascinating word is, for me, a pleasure of living. But most of the contemporary poets and writers I read, tend to write from the comfort of their university offices or comfortable homes.
These street poets, though, had set up shop on the midnight corner of a gritty city street among the people passing by, amid the fumes of taxicab exhaust, in the din of music and clamor seeping from a dozen jazz bars. They were doing their creative work right where the people were.
And how about us? Where are we doing our creative work of discipleship? If our art is living the grace and love of Jesus Christ, where is the best place for us to live it? My suspicion is that we can learn something from the street poets and do the work of Christ right where people need it most, in the midst of the busyness of daily living, with the people were they are, where we meet them every day. Following Christ isn’t an enterprise best practiced just within the comfort of a church. Following Christ is best done at street level.
So be a street-poet disciple.
First United Methodist Church