The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

 It is a rainy Monday, misty and I can hear the sound of the wet pavement as the cars zip by the highway outside my temporary dwelling. The fall colors are emerging and regaling us with the crayon box of God's creation. The temperature is starting to feel like sweater-weather, for real this time. I gaze out my window and during these last few days of October, my thoughts often turn back to that girl I was when October became the darkest month of my life.  Would she sit with me on the balcony, sipping this brown sugar latte with the touches of nutmeg and cinnamon? How would she tell me about her thoughts and dreams when all around her were the moments of disregard? What did she gaze out over a different balcony into tomorrow and hope differently for her future. She comes to my find often, these 42 years since her world shifted, and I look back through the lens of time and have questions for the ones who knew - and didn't rescue her. Growing up Baptist was filled with the do'...

 I am an Empath. The world feels heavy to me at times when I look out at the faces of people or just sense the weight of all that is happening around us in these un-United States. Those of us with a deep spiritual sense can be exhausted by it. I spent Saturday driving down to New York for a meeting of other ministers-in-the-process, and while driving, looking at the beautiful trees on the Merritt Parkway, just had to have one of my car-talks-with-God. Our world has been a bit turned over. It is very dystopian. So, in my talks, rants, actually, because God and I have this thirty-five-year-relationship where I can just talk to my Parent and say that is on my mind. I ask a lot of why questions. You know, the way our toddlers did when they were trying to understand the world. Especially if they were told, "No." The response of, "Why?" was not always throwing a temper tantrum, but genuinely wanting to gain knowledge and process. We talked. I prayed in my understanding an...

 I am a creature of habit. Like you could set your clock by me. Early riser who washes up, goes to the kitchen, starts the water for coffee, grinds the coffee beans, sets the milk so it can froth, cuts up fruit or makes toast or sets up yogurt, finishes the coffee - usually a French Press or a pour over, finishes the set up, sits quietly at the dining table or if warm, outside to have a morning respite. Morning respite includes time in the writings, meditation, prayer, and sometimes, just staring off into space as a contemplative. I wash the dishes, tidy up the space, shower and get started for my day. My day can depend on what is happening. When I was in my residency, my morning routine was often truncated because I had to drive to the hospital for mandatory 8am morning meetings. I was always a bit off if I hadn't risen by 5am so that I could have an hour of renewal before seeing what the day would unfold. The evenings are also a bit of creature-of-habit routine of me coming home,...

 I was all starry eyed with a glittering gleam in my eye when I was visiting my former pastor.   My then-man friend (can one call a man a boyfriend?) gave me his Mercedes-Benz to drive a few states over to visit some former friends.  That still baffles me, sometimes, that he gave me his luxury car to drive around. He actually had two and gave me the better of the two to go and visit. It was me and my sons on this visit. A bit of context, by the time I was that ripe-old-age-of-barely-thirty, I had already lived through the darkest days of my life, had already been married-and-divorced, had juggled the disappointment and shame that society heaped upon women (and all before social media made our every move ubiquitous with content), and was in a rebuilding my dreams stage of life. Back then, I was considered old, funny looking at it now, my children - all adults - are still figuring out their lives at the ages when I was responsible for someone else. Anyway, back before camer...

 There are a lot of days that I sit and watch the trees, the comings and going of life, or the waves of the ocean and ponder life.  I think deep down I am a mystic. Nothing like Harriet Tubman or Howard Thurman, but in my own way, very much a spiritually grounded deep thinker. Such as it is, I have my morning muse. Me, a hand ground coffee - usually one from Rwanda, Burundi, or Ethiopia - and I sit.  The very act of sitting is often eschewed in America. Very much so in historical Foundational Black American communities. Who has time to sit when survival has taken all the essence of life and being? Sitting, being still, pondering, perhaps there is some privilege in that, I'm not sure, but it is what I have always done early in the morning. I want to be silent in the deeper places of my heart and soul and hear from God. Probably thirty years ago, I remember the feeling of "what now?" after enduring some tumultuous changes in my life from age 23-29. The twenties are definite...

 I h ad the pleasure of sitting in a tea shop (I know, the avid latte lover in a custom tea shop!) with some of my sorority sisters yesterday.   We were just talking, no phones out, just sitting on the comfy sofas inside the well-considered shop in a part of Connecticut I am still discovering. What was supposed to be a "look see" one hour visit turned into discovering a third place and us testing out different aspects of the menu, vibing with the curated musical selection since the owner was a former music industry professional, and letting time just do her thing. While we were sitting and laughing, sipping different flavors, meeting the DJ and his son, in walks a larger group of people-who-don't-look-like-me. They were travelers looking for respite. Warmly welcomed, seated, shown the menu, and asked what they were in the mood for, you could visibly see this relaxation overcome them.  See, the power of connection and humanity is that is can welcome you in, it can disarm a...