Soul food doesn't have to be death food. James and I have started a new God-Directed healthy lifestyle to heal our body, soul, and spirit. We have been eating vegan and vegetarian adding fresh vegetable and fruit juices, lots of fresh raw vegetables and exercise. Yesterday we dined on fried green tomatoes (that's right fried) in a little coconut oil with a organic salad of lettuce, cucumbers, radishes, green onions, tomatoes, dried cranberries and walnuts with a strawberry vinaigrette. Ummmmm. It is not the first lifestyle change into healthy eating, basically, we were vegetarian before we opened "Freedom Cafe". I know, that's hard to believe! Now we have returned to caring for our temples (bodies) and not allowing matter to rule mind. Or, the flesh win over the Spirit. All credit to God Himself for He has indeed given us His Divine Nature and Divine Spirit to overcome the world and the fleshly passions and appetites. He has also told us to be moderate in all things, and disciplined. Something that I have struggled with most of my Christian walk. But when it is His time to intervene, He does and I am grateful for the gentle wooing of the Holy Spirit to move up another step and fight on another level. James and I both have medical conditions that are diet related and reversible. We live in a community where obesity and cardiovascular disease are destroying over 50,000 African Americans per year. God has called us to minister to the "whole" person, not just their spirit, but their soul and their bodies, minds and heart. He first must make this real in our lives through practice and discipline BEFORE we teach others. Moses had to learn how to shepherd sheep before he was promoted to "leading them". His Alone, Janice
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It's Friday, as I have been doing all week, running late for work. I stopped by the coffee shop close to work only to find a line of other sleepy heads trying to get their caffeine fix before heading off to work. Myself being no exception. I park and jump out of the car rushing in in hopes of being the only one there. Not so today. I go to the back of the line and wait my turn. I see the list of coffees for the day and one of them is from Papua New Guinea, a medium roast, I decide I would order a small cup and a tropical peach/apricot smoothie for breakfast. Meanwhile, I look around at the decor, it's funky and eclectic, reminding me of a few of my favorite places in Maine, where I lived for 15 years before moving back to where I am. It also reminded me of my cafe which was definitely eclectic with a little bit of everything. I had a good view because the line stretched to the back door, where I stood. Meanwhile, my creative juices were coursing through my soul as I looked around this little hippie shop with its creative offerings. The line began moving and I was grooving to the feel of a place that reminded me of my own funky, eclectic and creative musings, and then, without warning, an accent that cannot be ignored, cut through the sound waves into the atmosphere of my funky, creative mind. It was the sound of a older southern white male, sipping coffee and talking with his friend, bringing me back into the realty of where I was and where I had temporarily escaped in my mind. I 'm in Mississippi, Jackson, Mississippi, right smack dab in the middle of the capital of the state.
Suddenly, the booming sound of the voice reminded me of where I was, changed the scenes in my mind from pleasantries to the reality of the ugly truth about Mississippi, and the negative history it held for me, a black woman, who had been raised in Mississippi but left after high school and lived away for 35 years before returning. I finally reached the counter, ordered my coffee from Papua New Guinea and my tropical smoothie, at least I could escape somewhere else, even if it was in what I chose to order. I shook myself and remembered that while many things have changed some have remain the same, there was a time when I would not have been allowed to stand in this coffee shop with whites and other blacks, feel safe, and order coffee in Jackson, Mississippi. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be told to "go to the back of the line or bus or anywhere", but that was the reality for many blacks for most of their lives; because it was their reality and they fought for freedom, it is no longer mine. Thank God! It's a familiar sight. The door bell rings. You open it to a kindly person carrying a container, basket or box of homemade goodies, greens, sweet potato pies, cornbread, and indeed without fail fried chicken and potato salad. They carry the hot food, steam and smells permeating the air as they find their way into the dining room or kitchen where they join the rest of the food family, already there, on the dining room table or the kitchen counter; more sweet potato pies, freshly made butter pound cakes, ham, more fried chicken, mac and cheese, and greens and cornbread. Recently, my brother-in-law passed and we were in Arkansas attending his funeral and I again observed the food, funeral, and family ritual. Northerners might think it’s a family gathering or dinner party in reality - it is both, because it’s a funeral. There has been a death in the family and everyone in the community is bringing food for the family, while honoring the dead. Southern culture dictates that death, though sad, and depending on the age and/or the seriously of the illness, or the shock of an accident that claims a young life too soon, people still find the time to celebrate and show their love with food, lots of food! When my grandmother died when I was six, the thing that stands out most in my mind was the wake, which back in that time was held in the home. That’s right, not a funeral home, but inside the family’s home. In our case, it was in my grandmother’s house right next door to ours. It was a large clapboard house in need of a paint job with peeling white paint exposing the weathered boards underneath. It had two doors, one to the right leading into the parlor, and one in the middle of the L shaped porch leading into the living room where there was a wood burning fireplace. The house sat next to the main highway and the dirt road next to the paved highway was filled with cars, parked on the grass, some barely off the highway. There was a steady stream of people dressed in their Sunday best carrying food and pots filled with goodies into grandma’s house in celebration of her death - in honor of her life. The dining room table was filled with food and the older people where celebrating with a sip of wine or spirits of some kind. Now I loved food and always have, but the thing that I remember the most, that still stands out in my mind, is seeing the white coffin sitting in the middle of the parlor and my grandmother’s body lying there, embalmed, in Sunday best. I remember her lifeless face skin tight with a grayish color, with her gray hair curled tightly and combed out. She was my grandmother but that was the first time I had ever seen a dead body and one in a coffin. The people walked by her and said their goodbyes, and then the most horrid thing that could happen to a six year old girl happened to me. One of my grandmother's friends grabbed me and pulled me toward my grandmother’s coffin and told me to “Kiss your grandmother goodbye”. I hesitated and shook my head but that would not suffice with my grandmother’s friend because she pulled me closer to the coffin and gently pushed my face toward my grandmother’s and before I could object my face was so close to grandmother’s and the voice kept insisting “go ahead baby and kiss your grandma goodbye”. Unable to respectfully loosen myself from her grip, I quickly leaned the inch or so closer and gave a brief and quick kiss to the cold rubbery cheek of my grandmother and ran out of the parlor, Petrified and Horrified. Scared that I had kissed a “dead person”; the year was 1963. When my mother died, her daughter, 35 years later in 1998, there was no wake. People still brought food by the house and visited with us, but there was no coffin or dead body in the living room but there was a scheduled time for the family to visit momma at the funeral home. I had not seen my mother for almost two years as I had moved to Maine from Lawrence, Kansas in 1996, and had not been able to get back to Mississippi at that time. I talked with momma weekly, sometimes daily but I had not seen her physically in two years. When I walked into the cold room at the funeral parlor where her body lay on the slab, just as it had when she died. She still had her long gray braids, her face withdrawn and thin, the most noticeable thing was her extended abdomen. It was swollen to three times its normal size. Her skin too had that greyish hue, cold and dampness of flesh without it's life blood. I stared at mom, walked over to her lifeless body, still resembling my mother, leaned over and kissed that cold grey face, and said "goodbye mom, I love you, and I'll see you in heaven." This time no one had to pulled me to her body, no one had to tell me to kiss my momma goodbye - this time it came naturally, of necessity, I needed to tell my mom "goodbye". |
Janice Swinton
A radical Christian and follower of Jesus Christ, trying to walk and live out a life uncompromised in this world; being informed and conformed to His Image. Author, writer, independent scholar and wife to James for over 35 years. Archives
September 2013
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