The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

 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...

 I had the opportunity this past weekend to go to Vermont and New Hampshire. It was for a job interview and honestly, a moment of respite.   The past year was spent with me spending close to 72 hours-a-week in the hospital as a chaplain resident. To say that I absorbed a lot of sadness, uncertainty, doubt, fear, trauma, and death, is an understatement.  I had to do my intentional casting it off every day and do intensive self-care for my own soul. This work is not for the weak. So, while staying at a lovely inn in Vermont (why do a franchise of a national hotel where you may or may not have good service?), I was able to unwind.  The drive up was breathtaking and I couldn't help but to keep oooohhhhing and aaaahhhing at the mountains and natural rock formations in the middle of the highway that have been here for millennia.  This Earth is truly beautiful and she will replenish herself.  Once I reached my destination in the quaint little town of Norwich with...

 Each morning, I rise with the sounds of life going by. After refreshing and awakening myself, I have a routine. My coffee is part of my meditation.  Once I have that all set, I like to sit and meditate. This morning, it was in Proverbs 8 while eating pistachios and peaches. As I was sipping my lavender and vanilla latte with the sounds of the day unfolding, I couldn't help but think about how we got here. Was it in 1964, the year of my birth, and the Civil Rights Act was signed? Was it in 1965, the year of my little brother's birth and the Voting Rights Act was signed? Or perhaps 1968, the year of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the ensuing riots of pent up frustration from the years and years of Jim and Jane Crow abuse? Was it 1972, the year my father moved us from one town to the other and not long after, when a cross was burned in our front yard for the sin of my father wanting my step-brother to take Algebra at the integrated high school? Was it 1980,...

 One of the things I have loved in my life is the way of the Psalmist, the Mwalimu, the Qoheleth, the Scribes, The Writers, the Poets who can take the complexities of our emotions and eloquently put them into words that far exceed the skills of this writer.  I am trained as a Chaplain. Professionally, I help people put words to complex situations, to sudden loss, to devastating news, to catastrophic moments that upend their lives as they know it. We stand in the deep dense fog of the feelings that emerge and do not run from them. We let the tears flow and tell their own story. We stay uncomfortable. And as professionals, we tend to all the volumes we hold...and let it go.  In the middle of it, however, it is enormous.  Sudden news. Sudden endings. Sudden loss. What does one do with the enormity of what they thought would be their life just evaporating in a puff? Humankind has found themselves in this situation. From positions that suddenly end to natural disasters ri...

 I woke up this morning in a fog. You know, the kind that envelopes you with pending doom. In some ways, I've had that pit-in-my-stomach feeling every since November,even more so since January and every day since then. What new cruelty is being unleashed upon us now? How much more inhumane can these people be? When is it enough? Then, like many of my fellow Americans, we watched in sadness as Senators voted to advance the big-horrible-ugly-depraved bill and as one woman senator from Alaska said, they were hoping the house would defeat it. Where is the courage? In the dark of night on July 3rd, the weasel-of-a-house-speaker called the members into chamber to begin the debate of the bill and to call for a vote. While the rest of us were sleeping or at the writer's hour of 3am, he called them into session. So they went, and they spoke, the representative from Brooklyn held it the longest and after he yielded, they had a few more and in the span of time of me running a quick errand...

 July 1 is the start of the new sorority year, the new ministerial year (in my denomination) and the new academic year. My life centers around all of this so much that very often, I am getting a new planner for the new year.  It opens up for me the way the new calendar year does - filled with blank pages awaiting the adventures to come. There is the promise of hopeful engagement and the doing something new and impactful. This year is no different, and yet, very different. For one and for the first time in almost twenty years, my husband is not directly responsible for the life of an academic campus. He is still working within the educational system in a new role, but is no longer on-the-ground at a local campus. That is a new space-of-being. I am also embarking on a new area of ministry in my denomination as a commissioned deacon with a decided call to life in the arts and community. Being an entrepreneurial and public facing part of the church, I get to decide. So I am the de...