You are everywhere! I have heard those exact words directed my way more times than I am able to count during the past year or so. Sometimes it is shared excitingly, in amazement. Sometimes it feels like an accusation. Still, at other times, it comes from a place of deep concern for my well-being.

I remind my brothers and sisters that Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman could not be still, either. I tell them Mahatma Gandhi and The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made themselves available to people in many places. I take them back to the journey of Jesus, and find myself proclaiming, Jesus didn’t build a structure and then wait for people to come to him. He met people where they were.

Yet, I am not everywhere. I am simply here. Presente. Open to where I may need to be. Am called to be. Porous to all the breathings in the world I find myself in. Even so, I disappoint people, often, for not being where they believe I should be. It is unavoidable, not because their expectations are selfish or unrealistic, but because the world is in so much need of healing.

I cannot be everywhere. Each morning, as I lie in bed with my eyes closed, I whisper to my ancestors, to my Creator, What do you require of me today? The answers to the question come all day long. Sometimes they are difficult or inconvenient. Often they are easy. Either way, here I am. There I am.

There is much to be concerned about in the City of Milwaukee. Poverty. Homelessness. Racism. As a parent, educator, minister, human being...nothing makes my heart as heavy with concern than the many issues that engulf children and youth in this city.

Although the stories that lead the news each night put a spotlight on the struggles, tragedies, and daily challenges our young people face, such stories are just reminders in my world. All I have to do is step out my city door each day, or just open my bedroom window. And there it is. Young men, who don’t know how to claim another future, dealing drugs in the alley. A 17-year-old girl trying to escape the fists of her 20-something-year-old boyfriend. Three young boys bullying my own 11-year—old daughter for her bike.

Often the crisis rings my doorbell. A boy on a bike at 6:45am asking for some food to take back home for his siblings, his grandmother, and himself to eat before he goes to his sixth-grade classroom because “we didn’t have anything to eat last night.” An exhausted mother bringing me her 12-year-old son now that he “has been suspended again for fighting and I don’t have any more energy left to deal with it.” A young girl asking if she could just sit in my living room and read her book “since there is no smoke and not a lot people I don’t know like at my house.” I already know that our lettuce isn’t doing well. I also know there is a lot of blaming of the lettuce.

Yet, in the midst of this ministry I am called to, filled with despair, anger, pain; it is the spiritual teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, who has also taught me how important it is to ask “What’s Not Wrong?” He writes, we need “to stay in touch with the healthy, joyful seeds inside of us and around us.” These are the seeds that will heal us and our communities. For almost ten years, SeedFolks Youth Ministry has created and implemented programming that both addresses what is wrong and what’s not wrong within our families and community. We have intervention ministries, but we have also created programs that are proactive, nurturing and promoting healthy, life-giving choices.

What’s not wrong? There are teens who choose to be strengthened by coming together in SeedFolks Reading Circles to both address difficult issues, together, and affirm the value of opening a book.

What’s not wrong? There are children and parents who have reclaimed the values and pleasures that go along with tilling the soil and growing their own food in the SeedFolks Summer Garden Projects; in the process, crossing cultural bridges, learning life skills, and reconnecting with creation.

What’s not wrong? Hundreds of girls have come together in CHOICES ministries throughout the city, encouraged and nurtured by women who want them to have good, healthy lives.

What’s not wrong? Adults and youth are being challenged to find out what they were created to do and become in SeedFolks Rites of Passage Classes and nurtured as they make life-giving choices. There are many other things that children, teens and their families are doing that is not wrong. I invite you to join me in celebrating those choices.

I have taken more time in choosing the dishes I use in my home than I have in selecting the clothes I wear. The table is an important place to me. It is where you welcome your family home near the close of the day. It is where you recount the events the others may not have been with you to share. It is where you plan for tomorrow. The dishes, a candle or some flowers, a reflection of the season, a book of table prayers. They are not simply things. In my world, they represent the value in the moments shared. They say, This time, spent at this table, means something.

We have become a society...a world...that is so accustomed to throwing things away, most of us don’t even think about it anymore. But, I do. I think about where it all must end up and it makes me ill. At a recent graduation cookout, I watched as well-wishers came and ate and threw away by the dozens; cups, forks, dinner plates, dessert plates, spoons, napkins, knives. In my mind, I began to multiply what I was witnessing times all of the graduation events that would be held this year. Then I thought about Memorial Day, 4th of July, birthdays, weddings, family reunions…. And I cringed. I believe The Earth cringed with me.

My dishes hold memories. Memories of favorite meals, of conversations, of family laughter and tears. They are not just real, they represent something real. Something that can be passed down to my children. Something that can be remembered and honored.

It still surprises people when they come to a meal at Kujichagulia and we are not using paper plates. Yes, it takes more effort and energy. Why wouldn’t anyone think they are worth that? Why have we bought into the fallacy that we do not have the time to set a table that fully welcomes people and say “stay a while.”

You can’t wash a paper plate so too often we miss out on the sharing that happens when one person is washing and another is drying and putting away. It is at the kitchen sink where I have learned of breakups and new beginnings. Hopes and dreams. At Kujichagulia, accepting someone’s offer to wash dishes has provided the opportunity to hear their life story and sometimes even share mine.

This may all seem silly and unimportant to you, but I don’t care. I mean… I do care. This isn’t just about paper plates. It is also about why we should bake more, write handwritten letters, take more walks with friends, turn off the television, shut down our computers more often, play board games with our children, offer more poems, grow fresh herbs, listen to the stories of our Elders. The quality of our living is disintegrating. And we are willing participants. So, I am going to keep using real dishes and setting my table. What are you going to do?