Setting the Table

Imagine a table. There are many faces, both black and white, seated around that table. Everyone present wants their stories to be heard and their hardships to be acknowledged. Rightfully so. Sometimes I have the honor of sitting at that table. I sit beside my husband Charles and my best friend Melanie. Naturally, I gravitate toward their voices in conversations on racial reconciliation in our city.

Stay 731: Roots

I got my first tattoo when I was twenty-three years old. I worked for it, too. I was married at the time, and it took me two years to convince my wife that I should have one. I guess the compromise was that it would be a cross, which was hard for her to argue against. I picked the cross off of a poster-sized print hanging in the tattoo shop. The design was “flash,” which is a stereotypical design of a tattoo, but I didn’t know that at the time. I knew I wanted a tattoo, so I picked one out.

On: The HUB Classic

Caleb Hall, a student and basketball player for the JCM Cougars, won the Lane College Slam Dunk Contest at the Oman Arena Tuesday during a break between the sixteen different high schools battling in out in Area Relief Ministries’ third annual HUB Classic Basketball Tournament. JCM joined teams from North Side, Liberty, Trinity, and Madison from Jackson.

On: Growth Through Community

Our lives are marked by transition, and our feet don’t grow roots to tell us when to stay put. At every new season we find ourselves uncertain about what a step in a new direction might mean for us. Maybe we are desperate for change to lift us out of our monotony or afraid we took a wrong step somewhere or disappointed by our careers. Maybe it’s the success-driven culture we are raised in—but sometimes choosing to stay put is the least appealing option. Especially in Jackson, Tennessee.

ARISE Jackson: Bridging a Gap by Partnering with Schools

When I was five or six years old, I attended a Vacation Bible School at a Baptist church somewhere on the south side of Jackson. I can’t remember the name of the church now, only that on the last afternoon every boy and girl, ages five to nine, were packed into a multi-purpose room (what Baptists might call a “fellowship hall”), and a man or woman told us that we needed to be saved. I don’t ever remember any name of the devil being used . . . no Satan, Lucifer, or Beelzebub.