This picture hangs in my home and always returns me to a place of peace. Unfortunately the artist is unknown.
I like to dance. I am not good at it, but there is a freedom that overtakes me when I move my body to the music of 70’s funk. I dance to release stress and it is also a means of exercise for me now since the weather is cold and snow is on the ground. One day as I was dancing across the room, my arms rising in the air, my hips swaying, my knees aching and my face gleaming with joy of content, I realized that I was not alone. Present with me in the dance was Katie, Pearl, Yvette, Millie and Eliza. All women who are gone from this earth. These beautiful souls who touched me in ways that instill the person who I have become and who I am becoming. I felt their whispers in my ear, saying to me, “Close your eyes and dance until you get every worry, every disappointment, every sadness, out of your soul and mind. Dance until your feet can’t move any more. Then know, that everything is alright.” Y’all, I closed my eyes and danced until the sweat of insecurities, sweat of exhaustion from trying to be so many things for others, sweat of doubt, dripped heavily on the floor. And I didn’t even try to clean up the mess. I left it there to evaporate.
Hello! Welcome to my personal blog. I write to express love, acceptance with inviting readers to see God in their spaces and hopefully see the image of God in themselves. I am an ordained minister in the Methodist tradition. I was ordained in 2009 and have served a various churches as an assistant and youth pastor. I am mother to a terrific young woman who I admire for her boldness with sticking with her passion of film making. I am a wife of a guy who loves and fight for social and economic justice all God's people.
I started this blog when I was 58 years old. My mother had just died, I retired from a job, not career, of over 37 years and moved to a new strange location. I didn't know what to do or how to be next. This soft sweet voice in my head says, why not just be yourself, authentic and unapologetic. I've been scared most of my life to live freely because of what others thought and even how the church told me I was suppose to be. But I don't ever want to be what others expect me to be, I want to be what God gifted inside of me. So with that, I open myself up to all of you. This is who I am.
Thank you for dropping in!
Rev. Jacqueline Pinkney
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Beginning Again 