Memory Bank

Patrick and I have a memory jar. We started recently recalling memories from our days, writing them on slips of paper and tossing them in our little jar. I love this ritual of ours. Some days they are memories of fun things like winning the Wicked national tour cast basket at their special cabaret for CARES, and some days we store memories of everyday things like the way Fival the cat curls into a little ball and stretches his paw to cover his eyelids.

Last night as we recalled memories from the day, I remembered meeting an amazing woman named Clare in Sacramento this past July. She is delightful! Clare runs the Sacramento Art Complex, which is a cool gallery collective of local artists. Clare told me that she realizes everyone has a memory bank, and often these banks are filled with negative, difficult and sometimes traumatic memories. She says that each day she asks God to help her deposit a good memory in someone's bank.

This is Clare helping a little girl add to a mural on the wall outside of the Art Complex--certainly depositing into that girl's memory bank. On that very day, Clare also deposited into my memory bank by letting me paint a poem on the same wall!

I love it! What if lovers loved with that goal in mind? What if parents parented with that goal in mind? What if kids at school treated each other with that goal in mind instead of bullying? What if strangers met each other with that goal in mind? What if instead of only trying to create a beautiful life for ourselves, we were to think of how to help create beauty in someone else's life each and every day? What a wonderful world it might be . . . And I bet that Clare has an overflowing bank of memories from how she has inspired and delighted others! What a wonderful life she must live!

May you have a beautiful day and take some time to intentionally deposit delight into someone's memory bank. Today and every day.

peace.

love well . . .

I have one intention for my life right now: that I might love well.

And this intention is larger than I could imagine, but I'm excited about what it will mean. I will love the people I love well. I will love people who make my head pound and force my eyes to roll well. I will love my writing well. I will love the earth well. I will love my body well. I will love God and God's people well. And I will be open to whatever ways God may call me to love well . . .

As you can see, this is quite a life intention. I will need enormous amounts of accountability. I am grateful to be surrounded by beautiful, honest people who love me even when I don't love well (and I have been a poor lover more often than not). Thank you, my loves! Please keep inspiring me and holding me accountable.

My lastest joys for practicing some good loving:

Water. Water is life. And I'm drinking a lot more of life these days, and life is yummy. I'm not a fan of NYResolutions, but I guess this is the closest to one that I've made. So I upped the water ante a couple of weeks ago, and I can tell a difference already.

Yoga Journal. Such a good magazine with health tips, life tips and a greater understanding of the practice. I'm trying the 21-day challenge to commit to a home practice. Delightful.

Namaste. It's a Sanskrit word that basically means that the divine that dwells within me recognizes and honors the divine that dwells within you. We say this at the end of yoga practices, but I have better days when I think of namaste throughout my day. And I consider it a most loving of greetings. Would that we all might see and greet our Creator in our neighbors before anything else.

Miss Ruby. Our friend Miss Ruby is the most loving person I know. Her latest favorite song is "Say Hey" by Michael Franti & Spearhead. I'm pretty sure this is because every 30 seconds or so you get to repeat, "I love you," several times (and it's a good rhythm, and Miss Ruby loves good rhythms so that we can dance). She consoles people who seem sad. She laughs loudly. She watches the news and calls on "Jesus" when she hears of shootings and hardships. She says "I love you" as often as she can to as many people as she can, and I love that about her. She loves well.

CrazySexyLife. I stumbled across this site from a Facebook ad (I know . . . FB is so good at what it does). And this Kris Carr seems infectious. Great blog name, for starters. And let's not ignore her website's tagline: "a super disco of health, spiritual wealth and happiness!" Yes. And with increasing weight and blood pressure, I just got orders from the doctor to change some parts of my lifestyle. While I avoid diets (because the word "die" is in it for a reason), I think I like Carr's approach to lifestyle change. I just might be buying the book and love my body well.

Common Prayer. Liturgy at its finest. Written by three people I call friends. I'm struggling with church and all of its complexities these days. But I'm always a lover of liturgy. And this book helps me to love Christ well. Thanks, my sister, for gifting it to me. [There's a good web site, too, for daily practice: Common Prayer]

Writing. My first true love. And instead of critiquing it, I'm practicing silencing the editor and loving it back. And this is actually harder than I could imagine. But it hurts so good.

In his Ode Magazine article "Standing Barefoot Before God," Rabbi Rami writes, "write what you know and keep at it until you at last realize you don't know much and what you do know is terrifyingly trite and stupefyingly boring." And he basically encourages writers to let writing strip us bare. Yes. Stripped and naked and vulnerable--these are the places where God's light shines, where honesty can't help but dance, where words we are too afraid to say reveal themselves in crazy/beautiful madness.

That's all for today.

love well.

C

I Adore Life . . .

"I adore Life. What do all the fools matter and all the stupidity. They do matter but somehow for me they cannot touch the body of Life. Life is marvellous. I want to be deeply rooted in it - to live - to expand - to breathe in it - to rejoice - to share it. To give and to be asked for Love."

-Katherine Mansfield in a Jan. 20 letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell

May we all be deeply rooted in life today and all the days to come . . .

It's a Beautiful Day!

I hugged a stranger today.
I felt warm in 28-degree weather.
The frozen corners of my lips could not help but lean toward the sky.
I cried.

Barack Obama's election night win was terribly anticlimactic for me in the wee hour of 3 am on Nov. 5 in Mali. I was excited, for sure, but we had been traveling from the U.S. to Africa for nearly 24 hours. I expended all of my emotional excitement stepping off of the plane into the dusty Malian night. We slept for a few hours and then got up to hear the results. Since we didn’t find a television, we listened to a BBC broadcast of McCain's full concession speech on a tiny radio only to have the BBC station abruptly interrupted to return to a French broadcast of who knows what because my French abilities barely go beyond bonjour and viva la vie boheme. I heard Obama’s speech for the first time six weeks later. C'est la vie!

So today was my moment.

Lanecia and I walked to Nashville's historic Belcourt Theater to meet our friend Ingrid and watch an amazing day in history with my neighbors in Nashville. We have a new President and First Lady--a moment I've desired for 8 long years! We have our first bi-racial leader of the United States! We have the first First Family of African descent living in the White House--a building constructed, in part, by African slaves in America. And it's all happening on the heels of celebrating Martin Luther King's prophetic dream. Oh my God! It is a new day in the United States, and I am happy to live it.

***

I was six years old and starting my first day at a new elementary school. I met Jungle Gym Guard at recess. She was a six-year-old white girl who told me that I could not play on the jungle gym because of something the last black kid who played on it had done. Like a good first-grader, I ran to the teacher and told on Jungle Gym Guard. The teacher happened to be a member of the church where my father was appointed the new associate pastor. As it turns out, Jungle Gym Guard was a member there, too. The teacher told my classmate, "We don’t keep don’t make rules like that. Be nice to Ciona. She's going to be in your Sunday school class. Remember the new pastor who is coming to our church? This is his daughter."

See, my father was the first black pastor in South Carolina United Methodism to serve in a predominantly white congregation since Reconstruction (and by predominantly white I mean that we were one of two black families in the entire 2500-member church. The other black family had the last name White). Eventually the girl formerly known as Jungle Gym Guard became one of my best friends. I learned more of her story. Her grandparents had stopped coming to the church after my father was appointed there. So many members stayed and loved us and supported us for nearly 6 wonderful years. Others left like her grandparents, though. And some who stayed even requested my father not enter the room when he did regular pastoral hospital visits. This was less than 25 years ago.

Even in my lifetime of integrated schools, inclusive water fountains and school cafeterias where the “sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners” sit at the same table, I’ve still experienced jungle gym guards in various parts of my life in the U.S. I thank God that in this same lifetime I’ve been able to experience today. I especially thank God that my parents, and my 97-year-old great-grandmother got to see today, too.

So I walked to Belcourt in the cold. Smiling. Feeling warm from my excitement. Hugged a stranger after the inauguration. And cried.

It’s a beautiful day!




Images by Lanecia in the Belcourt

Photo Tag

I was tagged by my dear friend Mary.

Here are the rules:
1. Choose the 4th folder where you store pictures on the computer.
2. Select the 4th picture in the folder.
3. Explain the picture.
4. Tag 4 people to do the same.
5. No cheating (cropping, editing, etc.)



So I'm not extremely organized with my photographs. So I have only 3 folders and then a bunch of folder-less images. So here is the fourth photo from the third folder. I was taking bellydance photographs one Saturday. I needed dramatic eyes, so I called the MAC makeup artists. My photographs were supposed to be at 8 am, so I had to get them to design my dramatic eyes the Friday before my photographs and teach me how to do it myself. I took this photograph on my sister's camera on Friday so that I'd have a reference look for Saturday morning. I didn't quite perfect the look when I did my own makeup, but I like my photographs all the same. Here's one of the professional photographs from Saturday afternoon's shoot (I actually had to reschedule at the last minute for later in the day because I couldn't find my dance veils, and a bellydancer can't take professional photographs without a veil in some of them. Turns out my roommate had my veils at her church after she and my sister needed to use fabric for a youth event and grabbed my veils while I was hula-hooping a half-marathon instead of thinking, "This fabric isn't mine, and it seems as if it's hemmed. Maybe I shouldn't use it to throw on a table at a youth art show." I was livid, and they witnessed the Rouse Wrath. ARGH! But it all worked out fine in the end):



Now, I tag Heather, Falguni, Melissa and Lane if you happen to ever read my rarely updated blog at all (and if you've not done this before).

Smile Loudly

As I walked into Kroger on Charlotte Ave. yesterday, I saw a tall man in the parking lot. His face wore wrinkles like a shar pei. His body wore Carolina blue pants that hugged his waist right above his belly button, a white pullover and a baseball cap to match his pants. In his hand, which was worn by age, he carried a rectangular old school cassette player—the kind with 5 black push buttons and one red one. The player blared a Cher tune while Tall Old Man stepped in time, bobbling his head like a baseball player figurine taped to the dashboard of a car. His movements were small and almost arthritic, but he danced through the parking lot each step of the way.

“Do you believe in life after love? I can feel something inside me say . . .”

I laughed. I wasn’t making fun of him with my laugh. I laughed to participate in his joy.

He heard my laugh. And creating my all-time favorite grocery store moment, Tall Old Man responded to my laughter, “I love to hear you smile!” as he continued to let the music move him.

May your day be filled with special moments that move you to dance to the rhythm of life. May you find a moment to participate in someone else’s joy. And may you always smile loudly enough for the world to hear.

10 Days

The past ten days of my life have been a magical, mystical delight. I've been covered in the Holy Spirit. I've spent my days with people who believe in the joy of a purple tree and the hope of radically changing the world. We've had epic conversations until the moonlight nearly turned to sunrise. We've been inspired by each other over green tea and sushi. We've lied on blankets under a starry ceiling listening to beautiful people creating beautiful music. I've been moved by stories of Congolese boys and their falling whistles. I've been touched by talking with some high school-aged pilgrims, exploring the way. We spun in circles, dancing with 5-year-old Selby to music that expressed God's greatness. I've hooped with children whose names I don't know but whose smiles have found a home in my memory. I've inhaled God's glory and felt grace in my lungs.

May I breathe like this forever, Lord?

Shane!!!

In exciting youth group news: Shane Claiborne, author of The Irresistible Revolution is coming to our all-church retreat in October to speak to our youth!

We are in for a much-desired blessing!

Sans Houses

A beautiful Nashvillian has taken to the streets with a camera, recorder and an amazing heart, recording the stories of other beautiful Nashvillians living in this city without a house. She documents their stories at Sans Houses. Check it out! Amazing photography and audio clips!!