Do you still begin your day with a print edition of your local newspaper? Or do you read online?  I know that my local paper, the Indianapolis Star has been offering great discounts to get new subscribers while at the same time, they’re trying to maintain a competitive website to deliver local news. The NYTimes offers free subscriptions to their online edition to classrooms across the country. I found this free offer in an effort to convince a teacher to use an online subscription rather than purchasing print copies for classes. For some, there is the memory of our experience with print newspapers that we hope to share with our children: laughing at the comics, discovering a piece of news and sharing it with everyone all day or reading it aloud to a sick parent. I wonder what experiences today’s teens will be able to share with their children and grandchildren.

This week, Indianapolis celebrates its Spirit and Place Festival. This year’s theme is Inspiring Places. I met with old friends on Friday and went to an opening session on Spirit in Ordinary Spaces. 5 presenters of various shades, beliefs and occupations shared stories of how ordinary places like libraries, hospitals, Target stores and gardens became sacred for them.

I wondered what places have been sacred to me? Doesn’t this thought always return to our childhood home? Don’t we all work to have peace in our homes, filling them with sights and sounds and smells? Cleansing them, breaking bread in them, nurturing children and observing traditional customs in them? I thought about this: how some are careful who and what they bring into their space while others fill their homes with everyone in need of good company.  Aren’t homes the basic sacred space? Well, maybe not. Maybe it’s all about memory.

Just now, I think about Zetta’s visit to the African Burial Grounds and the memory that space preserves. Crazy Horse said “My lands are where my dead lie buried.” And perhaps his memories, too.

I think about the W.A.R. project and the community being formed among people of color through those shared memories.

I think about my school media center and how teachers are always shushing students, telling them not to do this or that because, they say in the most reverent tone “you are in the library”.

Memories make the theaters, schools, restaurants and parks where I spent time with my children have special meaning to me. I still laugh when I drive past the house where we used to live and see that the basketball rim is still crooked. I wonder if they fixed that garage door my daughter busted open when she forgot her key?  Finding the sacred, finding twinkling bits of love in the ordinary is about the memories we share.

Here is a really cool tool for make a little memory to share with someone special! Twinkle on, my friends!