In the wake of an election that has left some angry, others confused and still others tentatively hopeful, people are hungrier than ever for spaces to break bread with, be heard, and build bridges across lines of difference.

Throughout human history, sharing a meal has stood as one of the few things all of us have in common. As Christians, we’re always gathering around a table for one reason or another. We gather for the eucharist. We gather for dinner and a Bible study. We gather for a meal as part of a celebration of a life now gone from us. We gather for picnics and parties and as part of observing our holiest days.

So you are invited to participate in something that could have a profound impact in our local communities creating a groundswell of change. It’s small. It’s personal. It’s deeply rooted in the way of Jesus and yet, universal to the human experience. It’s something you probably participated in yesterday.

Dinner.

Over the first 100 Days of the the new presidential administration, we are hoping that at least 100 dinners will be held in homes, worship spaces, community centers, schools – anywhere across the nation – to foster renewal and healing in marginalized communities, for bridging across difference, and for real conversation that reminds of us of our shared humanity and worthiness. This too, is the work.

That’s it. #100Days100Dinners.

Will you set your table? Will you pull up a seat?

Red Letter Christians has partnered with 100Days100Dinners – a campaign of Faith Matters Network,  Hollaback and The Dinner Party to invite people to host or attend simple dinners in their communities. As Red Letter Christians interested in following the words of Jesus, this is the perfect opportunity to move from prayer and safety pins to radical hospitality and welcome around the ancient tradition of a shared table.

#100days100dinners encourages people to host a dinner either with folks you know, to encourage belonging and individual and collective healing (Track 1: Be and Belong) ; or with folks you don’t know, with the goal of bridging difference (Track 2: Where do we go from here?). All hosts will receive hosting guidelines, template emails, and facilitation tips. They will also be invited to participate in a weekly dinner host call and to join the #100days100dinners peer community on Facebook to share what’s working and what’s not. Last but not least, hosts will get a 30-minute call with an expert facilitator who’s practiced in either holding space for victims of trauma or in navigating conversation across the political aisle.

If you have been saying, “What do we do now?” This is what we do. We offer radical hospitality. We welcome the other. All this and more can happen around the table.

1. Host a dinner – You can sign up to HOST a dinner here: https://www.100days100dinners.us/host-a-dinner/ .
2. Attend a dinner – You can sign up to ATTEND a dinner here: https://www.100days100dinners.us/join-a-dinner/ .
3. SHARE – Spread the word with your networks! https://www.100days100dinners.us/ on your social media. Encourage folks to invite people to their tables. Share stories of hospitality for renewal or bridging across difference.

Jesus invites us to the table. You know that. Jesus invites us to tables that nourish us with plenty, mercy, compassion and of more than enough. I don’t know that sitting down to dinner with your neighbors or friends will serve all that goodness, but it could provide some of the nourishment we could all use right now – which could sustain us for the continued struggle for justice. And we could all use a little more nourishment right now.

It’s a call and response chant started on the streets of Ferguson that has spread across the nation.

“Mike Brown means”

“… we got to fight back!”

It rolls off my tongue in a sing-chant cadence, and my hips begin to sway, because I have yelled it as I’ve marched and rehearsed it in my dreams. It is bitter and sweet. We evoke Mike’s name and sway and pledge to fight. I’ve listened to voices I know and those I don’t call and answer in hours of live stream and together in front of court houses. I know–I know in my soul–what Mike Brown means.

Mike Brown means … something more.

Something larger than one more young Black man shot in his neighborhood. One year later, Mike Brown means … something more.

Mike Brown means something bigger than a hashtag, bigger than the beast-like threat imagined by Darren Wilson and even bigger than the neighborhood teddy bear that his mama and daddy loved.

Mike Brown means the 2016 presidential election includes questions about race for the first time in recent years. Mike Brown means we want to hear the next president of the United States of America say, “Black Lives Matter.”

Mike Brown means #BlackLivesMatter is a direct question for candidates at all levels — mayors and governors and senators and congressmen/women. Mike Brown means police brutality and militarization, education, poverty, and mass incarceration are unavoidable local and national political issues. Mike Brown means changing the system from within and dismantling it from without.

Mike Brown means new theology. Mike Brown means the church has had a wake up call. If or how it will be answered is the question. Mike Brown means from Episcopalians to Disciples of Christ to Lutherans to Methodists to United Church of Christ to the Southern Baptist Convention, so-called followers of Jesus are being watched for how they engage #PropheticGrief in this age. If the body of Christ cannot weep with Black mothers burying their children, then it is bankrupt, hollow, and full of dead bones that no church revitalization program can fix.

Mike Brown means a new #StayWoke Spirit that is breathing down America’s neck. Mike Brown means #ICantBreathe and I can’t sleep, so I stay awake, eyes open to the oppression, injustice, and pain of our world.

Mike Brown means a new justice movement with respect for leadership from elders and for youth. Mike Brown means a new justice movement with women and queer people front and center, with intersectionality that will not be set aside in order to win a single issue.

Mike Brown means that until Black teenagers are free to walk down the street, to go to pool parties, and listen to loud music without being injured or murdered, none of us are free.

Mike Brown means new networks and relationships and conversations. Mike Brown means nonviolent direct action training for today that includes “how to live-stream” and “how to deal with the effects of teargas.” Mike Brown means learning lessons from freedom riders and embracing the technology of now and the future. Mike Brown means we text, we blog, we tweet, we periscope, we vine, we march, we dance, we “die in” on interstates and in malls, we strategize, and we act.

Mike Brown means we #ShutItDown.

Mike Brown means we are determined to recapture our narratives despite “official police reports.” You may still be able to kill us but not without witness, video, hashtags, and voices raised.

Mike Brown means we are all photographers, videographers, and reporters. Twitter is a source for news, and the people have the power to document the world. Mike Brown means I see your “official report” and raise you an uncut YouTube video.

Mike Brown means the curtain has been pulled back on white supremacy. We dismantle it brick by brick with our sweaty, dirty, blistered, and bleeding hands as long as it takes to do so.

Mike Brown means symbols of white supremacy, racism, slavery, war and oppression can no longer be excused by the thin veil of heritage. Mike Brown means no more whitewashed history.

Mike Brown means respectability politics is dead. Hands up, pants down, dreadlocked, tattooed, club on Friday, church on Sunday, educated or not, profanities and clean lips, loud, and angry — we are a rich and complex and beautiful mystery. Mike Brown means you will not ignore me because I don’t fit your easy to understand, categorize and dismiss, respectability mold.

Mike Brown means justice might not come today (that arc of justice is so damn long), might be a long, long way off, but Mike Brown means we will not give up.

Mike Brown means we remember those who have gone before like Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Bayard Rustin, who aren’t as shiny and polished as #MLK because this time it is not about a charismatic central leader. Mike Brown means it’s time for all of us to show up, stand up, and start saying and doing something.

Mike Brown means we really have to decide if we can love without determining if the other person is worthy first. Mike Brown means we have to live #RevolutionaryLove not just sing about it.

Mike Brown means the sleeper has awoken. Mike Brown means we are dreaming again — in pictures, paintings, stories, poetry, prose, music, and movement we imagine a future of freedom and liberation.

Mike Brown means we are tired, weary from tense conversations, emotional conversations, bodies on the ground, voices raised in the street, and fear in our hearts.

Mike Brown means we are hopeful. It means we are #Blackgirlmagic and #BlackLove and #CareFreeBlackWoman and #YoungGiftedandBlack and more determined than ever to love my blackness and yours. Mike Brown means we look death in the face and say, “You can steal my innocence, but you will not steal my substance.”*

Mike Brown means Trayvon Martin means Tamir Rice means Sandra Bland means John Crawford means Eric Garner means Christian Taylor and all the other victims of systemic racialized violence, police brutality, and our white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchal culture of fear.

Mike Brown means we’ve got to fight for all of them. For all of us. Because one more time, until #BlackLivesMatter it is a lie to say #AllLivesMatter.

Mike Brown means one year down and many more to go. You rest in peace, Mike. We got this.

Mike Brown means we who believe in freedom will not rest until it comes.

When I say, “Mike Brown means … we got to fight back!”, this, all of this, is what I mean.

I don’t really like maps. I learned how to read them in elementary school, but even today I stare at maps, eyes crossing, my brain finding it difficult to transfer what I see on paper to the world I see when I look up.

But as I try to do the work of community building, I’m beginning to realize that my understanding of maps may be all wrong. I don’t think I fully realized what maps were or what the cartographers were trying to show me.

See, cartography is a combination of artistic expression, aesthetic appreciation, creativity, science, research and technique. Cartographers must model reality as they see it in ways that communicate meaning. Maps tell stories about place, animals, people, histories and the what we observe in the moment. Cartographers have power. They convince us that what we see is what they have written. Their lines and curves convince us that the paths they have drawn exist and can be followed.

Many of us are cartographers for our communities – faith leaders, spiritually motivated activists and organizers, concerned parents in the local schools, and engaged neighbors. We are creating a world of people, places, plants, animals, streets and gardens. There is no magic pen, creating the world we wish for, but the world we hope to see when we look up from our maps is related to how we map what we think we see.

Are we making meaningful maps?

As a community cartographer, mapping possible pathways to shalom, I want to be able to see not only what I wish to see, but also capture an accurate understanding of what there is to see in the world already. Sometimes we are so anxious to map out ways to change injustice and pain that we do not stop to develop robust cartographies of struggle*. This is of particular importance for those of us who have had the struggles, colonization, and courageous resistance of our people groups left off of most maps. A valley or street name may remain, but for the most part, we exist as a footnote to maps of finished imperial conquest and neatly presented places.

For too long the maps of those claiming the name of Christ have been imperialist, colonialist, power-wielding maps that survey the land from the outside. Cartographers of the Church have for too long been working with empire approved maps with unquestioned overlays of power and prejudice and arbitrary boundaries that have no meaning.

It’s time to use different tools for our maps. If we keep going to the same mapmakers, same schools of cartography and working from the same dysfunctional maps, we will never make it to the land of shalom. We must make new paper towns on our maps – beloved communities of hope that don’t exist yet – but just might, if enough people are willing to go there. These promised lands of equality and justice that we put on the map, prove are maps are our own. They are the places on our maps that we can’t see when we look up, but still somehow believe are there.

Want to see maps that look a little more like abundant lands, equal fields, and kin-doms of justice? Listen to community and spiritual cartographers who are different from you.They may even use different tools or methods. Try their maps anyway. Twist your head, spin the map – see if you can see what they see. Draw your maps. Overlay them. Compare. Learn. Adjust. Observe. Collaborate. It might just end up that when you look up from the map and look around, you see you’ve got a treasure map on your hands.

One very unique gathering where you can listen to and collaborate with the types of social and spiritual “cartographers” I am referring to in this piece is the Transform Network Gathering happening April 23-25, 2015 at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. This year’s gathering focuses on urban ministry and transformation. Join me, Shane & Katie Claiborne, Lisa Sharon Harper and other Red Letter Christians by registering here using this $50 off code DC2015.