Issue link: http://maconmagazine.uberflip.com/i/1512887
DECEMBER 2023/JANUARY 2024 | maconmagazine.com 85 I tap into that joy when appreciating beauty, while being in nature, breathing deeply and exercising my body." Many symbols in my faith tradition point to a sustaining joy. The image that moves me most these days? The tambourine. As the biblical Exodus story goes, when the Israelite people leave Egypt and cross the Red Sea, they sing. Miriam's tambourine calls to the people whose feet are still muddy from trudging across dry ground as the waters are held back. She sings a repeated chorus that reverberates through the women and moves them to dancing, responding, and knowing in their bones that life has forever changed and that they will survive it. I wonder how many times Miriam had sung beside the water. When had she stood beside a river and put a tune to the depth of feelings in her heart? Moses, her brother, once brought her to the water as a child. I wonder if the fear she had as a child fueled her adult-sized fears. Fear can swallow up joy. What strikes me here is not that she began singing - this was a tradition among women to offer a song celebrating the heroic acts of battle or a er a victorious event. Instead, I wonder - when did she pick up the tambourine? Did she reach for it a er humming the song her mother taught her? Maybe Miriam put words to the rhythm pattern she heard in their feet walking towards freedom. Did she need to gather her sisters to help her voice what she had been composing throughout the journey? When did she turn her attention to a deliberate joy? At the Cotton Avenue Plaza in downtown Macon, the Macon Mental Health Matters group decided to reclaim a space for healing and joy with a pop-up yoga event. Bodies that stretched in yoga poses bent toward intention. "To choose joy in spite of all of the obstacles and adversities is a nod to the embodiment of resistance," said Andrea Cooke, "Yoga and mindfulness in that space allowed us to reclaim our joy in a space that once represented grief and tragedy." How will we hold joy in 2024? You might pick up a tambourine or tap shoes. You might lay down a yoga mat. I hope we sing beside the water. I hope that when we see children twirling in the holiday lights or someone dancing at their car steering wheel, that joy will move us to dancing too. "Joy is a revolutionary force. We need it as much as we need anger because it is joy that will help keep us in these bodies long enough to enact justice," says author Evette Dionne. BELOW Hayiya Dance Theatre Christmas show, courtesy of Pilar Wilder Lowden. Women's Interfaith Alliance members learn a folk dance at a monthly gathering, courtesy of Debbie Kraft. Women's Interfaith Alliance members