The Waging Peace Podcast

The Audacity to Confront Injustice: Women Who Are Making History Today.

• Diana Oestreich • Season 2 • Episode 2

Share episode

 Rev Cece Jones Davis is a Woman Who is Making History Today.

Her impact has been recognized and celebrated throughout the United States, including an Emmy nomination for a KFOR News conversation on racial (re)conciliation, receiving the 2021 Change.org Changemaker of the Year Award and Special Congressional Recognition for her efforts in civil rights and social justice.


From a small town to leading the charge to challenge injustice Reverend CeCe Jones Davis has the audacity to make history.

In this Episode:

-  Her story of trying to be a stay at home mom and  ending up leading the charge to save Julius Jone's life and  challenge the death penalty to be  just.

- How she found her purpose by following one child or person who introduced her to the issues of AIDS  advocacy and menstrual justice.

- The only book she's read twice, and wants  YOU to Read!

She leaves us with  one question to ask ourselves:

"Determine for yourself, what do I believe about children?
Once you determine what you believe about children, figure out what direction you want to move toward and don't stop."

Find out more about Rev Cece Jones Davis
Follow her @CeCeJonesDavis

 

This is a growing podcast, will you take 30 seconds and help us?

Yes! I will sign up to get the newest episode delivered by owl to my inbox!

Heck yeah! I will leave a review because I know how much it help

Diana Oestreich:

Welcome to the Wage and Peace podcast, everybody. This has been one of the hardest weeks for many of us, and so getting to meet with Reverend CC Jones Davis has been so on my radar and on my heart and so so pumped. So welcome to the show.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

Thank you, I'm so glad to be here. I'm here with you. I just love you so much and I really appreciate you reaching out and I'm happy to talk to you.

Diana Oestreich:

Well, we're doing a segment on women waging peace and basically I believe that women are revolutionizing the world right now and they are changing the status quo and they are refusing to accept the world as is, and so you're one of those people. So I always love to tell people how we met. I have no idea how I first met you, but I know from afar. I was like, oh man, she is amazing. And then we got to be in person at the same the same event and I was like I'm just going to play it cool, like you know, hug you. But we did get to meet and it was amazing.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

It was. Can I tell you what I thought? Okay, so I had not heard your story until we were together down in Nashville and we were together at Nashville for the Red Letter Christians retreat, with our boy, shane Claiborne, and the whole crew, and that was the first time that I met you. That was the first time I'd heard your story. And when I heard your story I was 100% blown to smithereens. I mean, my heart was so blown away by this little bitty woman who has shown so much courage in her life and it's not many. This I mean.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

You know, I meet interesting folk all the time. I'm blessed to meet interesting people all the time, people doing incredible things. But when I listened to you and heard your story of how you chose courage in very, very hard moments, moment by moment, in real time, with no cameras and no influencers around and no one to impress, just something that came out of your own spirit and out of your own guts, man, that thing blessed me so much and so I'm such a fan of yours, I'm such a fan of your courage and your response and the things that make you just uniquely you. I'm just so inspired by you.

Diana Oestreich:

Well, I'm definitely tearing up a little bit because, as a woman, I don't feel like encouragement is something that I often hear, and then, as somebody who doesn't believe in violence, somehow people really don't like that. It's so threatening and I'm like, oh my gosh, I should, you should like this about me, because it means that no matter what you choose, I will never harm you. I'm like how does that, how does that push so many buttons for folks, especially men, if you've ever seen the, whenever you say you've been in the military, people tell you their stories about how they were going to go in the military. They're going to this, or their cousins, cousins. You know. I'm always like why are you? You know, like if I was a man, would you just ask me my story? Would you listen to my story? Like, why are you talking at me? You know, yeah, so that that retreat was so wildly different I I couldn't.

Diana Oestreich:

It was intimidating for sure to share the stories that were the hardest but were the truest. Sure, about each of us. But thank you for seeing that and just cheering it on.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

Absolutely.

Diana Oestreich:

And so I've already filled everybody in a little bit on your background. But I wanted to just start off with what you know. What were the moments when you first kind of sensed your purpose percolating you know where, you're not sure, but you see something, but you don't know, but you're all in.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

Yeah, okay, that's such an interesting question. I don't think anybody's ever asked me that and so that's amazing. Thank you for asking. You know, I grew up in a really, really small town in the middle of nowhere, america, right In the state of Virginia, down a long little windy road right that may or may not have involved some gravel. I grew up in a very faith-filled family. My grandmother, my mother.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

I grew up going to a little bitty church with a handful of members where me and my twin sister have a twin sister named Lili. Me and my twin sister were the, you know, by the time we were seven, eight, we were the ushers of the church, you know, we were the choir. We would run collect often and then they were like and now we will have a sermonic selection by CC and Lili. So we would have to hustle to put the, you know, the offering plates away, to run to the front of the church to sing a song real quick, and that was just the culture and environment. And then we were in charge of heating up the food for every Thursday, sunday, the congregation would go to the back and we would eat food together. Like you know, we would stay up all night with our grandmother the night before baking cakes and fried chicken, right, and so we would then need to run from singing to start heating up the food for after the sermon. So I grew up in a varied, quaint, powerful, loving community of women who were constantly serving and then teaching us to serve, not because, oh, this is something that, oh, they should know. How nice to teach CC and Lili how to serve. No, it was necessity. Somebody's got to collect the offering, somebody's got to sing the song and somebody's got to heat up the chicken. You know, and so might as well be them. So I grew up in that. I grew up in that culture of you just do what needs to be done, you help people, you serve people.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

My mother would consider herself. You know I'm an advocate, I'm an activist. You know I'm a minister. My mother was very much an activist and advocate, but she wouldn't have used those words. She would say that she was a missionary. And you know my mom is the last person you want to see coming when something's wrong. You know, if Suzy's house burned down and the, you know, if Suzy's house burned down, it's my mother who's going to take it upon herself to go knocking on everybody's door to collect the furniture, to collect the clothes, to say, hey, sam, I saw last summer that you had an extra sofa in your basement. Where is it? Because Suzy needs that sofa, please, and thanks. Right, and I just kind of grew up with a mom and a grandmother who were very much like trying to help people the best way they could, right. And I would say you know a part of that, a part of growing up in a spiritual environment, right, I had.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

You know, I have very much Pentecostal roots and so anybody who knows anything about being a Pentecostal or charismatic, we, you know, we see things, we hear things, we see things, we speak things, we touch things, you know, like it's a lot. And you know, by the time I was eight or nine, you know my uncle, who's a bishop, a Pentecostal bishop, said to me, me and my sister were standing beside each other. He pointed to us. He said you know, I don't know which one, which one it is, but one of you has a call, like a really intense call on your life, and I knew that he was talking about me, now that my sister did not have a call. He was talking about a call to a ministry, like how he could identify, right. Sure, and I knew he was talking about me and I was like I was eight or nine or whatever it was and I was like, oh man, like that's, I do not want that. You know, like the last thing I want is to be some boring preacher in a pulpit, like because that's all I understood ministry to be at the time. And so it became like a real heavy weight because I knew that he was talking about me and over the years I would have people like my uncle and others like speaking into my life.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

You know, I remember another time where he said maybe I was 11 or 12, he would always come with the heavy stuff. And you know, you got to stay with him because they always come with the heavy stuff. He said to me you're called to be a diplomat. I was 11, 12. I don't know what a diplomat is, right, I don't know, but in any case I know I answered that in the long way. But I knew from a very young child what my purpose was, that I was called into the ministry of Jesus Christ, that I was called to be a diplomat, right, and I have watched that unfold over time in terms of. What does it mean? What does having the ministry of Jesus Christ mean and how it looked in my life? All the things I saw from my mother, my grandmother, my community prepared my heart to serve people right. My educational background prepared me to see the world and to critique the world, and then God's hand on my life just gave me the ability to then go forward and figure out exactly what I'm called to do.

Diana Oestreich:

And so right now, I know many people would connect you with the fight for Julius Jones and some people that you might know that name.

Diana Oestreich:

You might not know that name, but, short story, he's one of many black men who are innocent sitting on death row and people are fighting to have their cases dismissed, reexamined or, you know, have the justice system become just because in their cases it was not.

Diana Oestreich:

So. For many of us, who have never been introduced to the idea of executing justice, and not people or even you know many people don't know a single person on death row, so we don't even know it exists, even though our country is persistently and consistently putting people, giving them death sentences. So I guess my question is you know, in the Christian tradition, jesus changes the whole eye for an eye situation and he's like no, no, that's the old way. I want you to forgive, I want you to love your enemies, I want you to lay down that sword. So can you tell me about what you've experienced, as your purpose has walked you kind of through into the justice system, into abolishing the death penalty, and what, what you want people to know about the power of using your purpose, connecting to something that you see?

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

Absolutely. I learned about Julius. I was at. I had been living in Oklahoma for some time. I saw the documentary that was done about. But let me go back a little bit. I had done a lot of advocacy work before I was living in Oklahoma. At the time, just really trying to be a stay at home mama and mama business is really what I was trying to do. I learned how to bake bread from scratch and my family was thinking of moving out of Oklahoma to take to find another opportunity for my husband's work.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

And June of 2018, I heard the spirit say to me you can't go yet. And one thing about the spirit when the spirit speaks to me, the spirit not only speaks to. The spirit makes movements, like in my mind and in my body. And so, literally, I heard the spirit say you can't go yet. I've got something for you to do. But as the spirit was saying that, the spirit was also shaking the spirit's head, saying, nope, you can't go yet, I've got something that I felt that resounding in my body. It bothered me because I was ready to go. But I but I got with some of my friends and I said, hey, this is what the spirit says. I need y'all to help me pray, because I don't know what it's talking about. Very long story short, but my family decides to stay in Oklahoma for some time and I still didn't know.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

But in the end of July, the end of July, I stumbled upon Julius Jones's story through a documentary and that was produced by Ola Davis. It was amazing on ABC. And by the end of it I was wrecked because I was living in the state right where this black man was on death row for a crime that it didn't seem from what I saw. It didn't seem like he committed at all and I after that I connected with some community leaders and his family and it was when I connected with his family a couple weeks after I watched the documentary, and they said thank you for wanting to help my child.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

It was then where the spirit said this is it? Sugar's head up and down. I said, yep, this is it. This is what I need you to do In the pursuit of my own purpose. What I have found every time, whether I've been working in HIV, aids or menstrual equity or now the death penalty and whatever else I will do, god has always, always, always asked me to chase after the one. The one has always been the person who has brought me into the issue, into the policy, into the bigger story, into the bigger problem. Julius Jones, and seeing, finding seeing the humanity not just in him but in his mother and his father and his sister and his brother, made me look at this death penalty and theoretically I'd always been anti-death penalty, right, but I never had death penalty staring me in my face before right Until then. And it was at that time when I you know, when you see the issue connected to a human being, where you understand how unacceptable it is.

Diana Oestreich:

And how connected we are to that, because my story is opposite.

Diana Oestreich:

I don't know how I grew up like Baptist, love and Jesus, but I remember giving a speech pro-death penalty in high school because we had a speech class and someone had to and I look at it and for, I look at it now and I'm like all these things that I was for that death penalty, war, killing, you name it. I was like, well, I for an eye was basically it. It all changed when I connected or saw the person at the end of that and in my spiritual moment I just heard the good Lord like tell me truthfully that he, that I, didn't love anybody the way he loved.

Diana Oestreich:

He loved people so, like all of the killing was never it for him, like he loved people and I saw people as disposable or important. But the minute you see that person, the humanity, and you see the love that is true. You can never walk away from fighting for a person that is loved. You can't feel it, you know they're loved, I'm loved, I'm like shoot. Now we've got to do something about this, because love requires us to run after it.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

Love requires us to get into the mess right, and that is what Julius and his family have done for me. They have educated me in very real, hard, fast time. It has been one of the hardest things I have ever witnessed, been a part of, watched, endured, because we're talking about a human being's life and we're talking about a system that was dead bent on killing him, no matter what the evidence said, no matter what the questions were, no matter. I mean you talk about. And it was very interesting because we were in a state, oklahoma that was very conservative, very conservative values in terms of generally speaking, in terms of being very much pro-life and things like that. But when I'm telling you that that system came after that one black man's life with a vengeance, a lot of times we see black men, we experience black men who have lost their lives and their blood is already spilt in the industry and there's nothing we can do other than rage against what has already happened right and try to change that from ever happening again. Anybody else but Julius Jones was a very interesting situation because we don't have a lot of opportunities in America it doesn't happen every day where we have a clear opportunity to rally behind one man's life before he loses it. It is a different kind of animal and it was difficult for me, I had to tell you it was difficult for me to be in a state that said they love Jesus so much, yet so insistent on killing this man. It was hard for me. I remember one of the first.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

I was very naive when I walked into the work around the death penalty. I didn't really know how strongly Christians felt about the death penalty being pro-deaf in the end. Until then I was naive, right. And so after I started the documentary I said, oh, surely the people of God will not allow this in the state of Oklahoma. So I started writing emails. I'll never forget it. I wrote this passionate email and sent it out to 146 pastors. I had to research every last one of those pastors right to find their emails. I got a list of 146. I sent that email out and I was not prepared for what I got back. I got back some of the nastiest, meanest I call them nasty grams emails that you would ever imagine from pastors who love Jesus and I said, well, damn it, we're going to have a hard go here. And so, julius, being that one brought up penalty changed my life completely and I will never be the same.

Diana Oestreich:

Well, I'm thankful for you sharing your story, and also the heart of it, of it's hard when you expect people to care and then you get the nastiest things that you've ever had because you dare to ask for one person's life.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

You dare to ask for one. And you know what. I'm going to tell you something. You know what it really is. The system has no empathy. The system is built to propagate the idea that it is always right, that it is always just, that it's always fair and that. How dare you question it, how dare you question what we have built, how dare you question our apparatus? How dare you question our way of being right, our way of doing justice? Like it is, like the system cannot, cannot understand the audacity of a person like me, or the audacity of people like me to say wait a minute, hold up, we're not going to do this today. We're not going to just be killing this black man today. Hold up. The system is not created for dialogue. It is a one-way situation. It is that way and no other way, and it deeply resents the audacity of people who will challenge it.

Diana Oestreich:

Which is why I think women's voices are so powerful right now because they are having the audacity to refuse to accept these dead systems. And we say systems, but these are passionate people who continue to say we need this, we will do this, and we're angry at anybody that questions this. So who or where are you being inspired by women who are revolutionizing how we show up and how we show up and speak truth to these injustices, who are choosing the power of love instead of the power of hate, nonviolence instead of vengeance? Who are these relentless voices for change that, you see, are having the audacity to call the truth out?

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

Yeah, oh Lord, have mercy. So many, so many. But let's start with history. You can see on my wall right here some of the women who, throughout history, have been so audacious, right, and because they have had such hard and courage they have literally changed the world. I walk into my office. I have these people on my wall, so intentionally.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

I walk in here every day and I look into these women's faces. I have Ida B Wells who, in the South, challenged and brought to light what was happening around lynching culture at the height of lynching right. I have got Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat right. I got Harriet Tubman, who freed how many people by following a dog on North Star that could not read, could not write right, could have been fine because she had got her own freedom, but she said that's not good enough. I've got to go back and get freedom for myself. It isn't good enough. I've got to go back and get freedom for others. Wrist her life over and over again, going back by following a star and hearing from God alone. I'm telling you right now I've got Coretta, scott King and Ruby Bridges and all of these incredible women who I look at every day on my wall and I say dog on it. If they could do what they had. Hattie Daniels you can't see her here, but here she is. Hattie Daniels won the first Oscar, I believe, of any black person for her role in Gone with the Wind, playing a maid or a manly figure in Gone with the Wind, and could not even walk through a front door to get her Oscar, but God did anyway. I'm going to tell you if these women could endure, if these women have endured, how much more, with all of my privilege, can I do to advance people, to advance the human story? How much more can I do? All right, so they are my foundation. I roll up in here and I look up at this wall and I'm like, oh yeah, I can tell you today, right Now.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

I mean there are others, you know Laura Porter and Stephanie over at the Eighth Amendment Project. This is a Fouwanda Brassville. This is a woman led organization which is called the Eighth Amendment Project. They do anti-war work all over the country and have for a very long time. They're doing incredibly powerful work. Joya Erin Dorton she has organized an organization called Flock Faith Leaders of Color Coalition that's working specifically against the death penalty.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

Oh my God, who else? My girl, rahel, is coming out with a book. I'm going to tear up her last name so I won't say it. The people I need you to Google Rahel R-A-H-I-E-L. She wrote a book called Imagine Freedom. It's launching, I think, next week. Y'all find Rahel's book. It's incredible. My sister is a federal law enforcement agent.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

The way in which she is using her work throughout her life to help people, to challenge systems, to break barriers Incredible. Lisa, sharon, harper, kim and Ewan some of these people you may know, but these are women who I watch every day Tamika, mallory these are women who I watch every day and I'm like dog on it. Women have always been at the forefront. We have always been doing the work, whether we were recognized for it or not. We've always been doing it right and I gained my inspiration and my courage from these women and women like these, because some days I'm going to tell you, diana, some days I don't have my own courage, some days I've got to literally plug into somebody else's courage, borrow their courage and go about my business and do what needs to be done, and these are the kind of women that I borrow from all the time.

Diana Oestreich:

And these women and I look around and some people are like, well, how do you have hope? And I'm like, well, I don't Like, every other day I have hope.

Diana Oestreich:

But you know what, if we have enough hope to show up one day out of seven, and it's- that day that somebody needs us to show up alongside of them and say, not today, like this isn't right, then like that's okay, that most days it's tough, but those women that you're getting courage from, I feel like are so powerful because they spoke truth to power in the moment, yes, when nobody dared to, where the majority said this is, you know, it's one thing to after the fact, come on board and say, yep, I mean, that's like the safe thing. But credit Scott King she was calling for LGBTQT rights way back in the South as like in like the ministerial you know thing, and I'm like, do you know how gutsy that was that she did that? Come on.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

And do you know how good that is on top of being a woman in the South but from the Black Church? Right, we talk about how hard LGBTQ communities have suffered in the Black Church and folks might not, like me, say that I'm gonna say it anyway because it's nothing but the truth. So to be a woman back then fighting for those kinds of issues among her own people and others who God Right.

Diana Oestreich:

And I look at that and I'm like man, like the truth is the truth is the truth. And if we, if we can encourage each other that we're going to have each other's backs and that it matters to speak it today, even when everybody hates, hates us, hates to hear it, I'm like we're still building that blood community. Yeah.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

But, diana, can I also say it would really be remiss of me if I did not say let me tell you something. Honey, this Wage and Peace book here, this, this, this book sits out Like it's not one that goes on my shelf, like it sits out. So I want your listeners to know that after I met you down at the retreat, I ran it and got your book. I don't know if I got it there, I don't know if I ordered online, I don't know where I got it, but I got the book and I read it. I've read it twice. I'm not one that reads books twice, okay, but I've read this book twice.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

And so, as I talk about the women on this wall, as I talk about the women in the death penalty space and my sister and all the other women who inspired me, let me tell you something. You inspire me. You inspire me because you, with your little self, went over in the middle of nowhere to somebody's deserts and decided to love people, whatever it cost you. You saved a baby's life. Okay, folks, I hope you've already read the book, but if you haven't, please go read it. You saved a baby's life. I read that part. I wept on the airplane. I called my sister when I landed and I said I need you to hear what this lady did.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

You stood toe to toe with patriarchy in the military. See, people gotta understand this stuff. Here In the military, you stood, with your little short self, toe to toe with a man that said this is what I signed up for and this is what I'm going to do, and, as a result, you saved a woman's child. We've got to be willing. We've got to be willing to stand up with courage, even when it cost us the most. And, honey, you do that. And so I just want to thank you, because sometimes, when I'm having a difficult moment and choosing courage for myself or whatever the reason is, I think back to some of those stories of you sitting with women and drinking tea. I sit back and think about some of those stories about how you could have decided to ran over a child in the street, but you didn't. I think of those stories that I say, okay, nelsie, say make the right decision. Make the right decision, cause they matter.

Diana Oestreich:

Well, I'm grateful that you read those stories and I don't share those stories a lot, but I live the power of that one and that's why I think when I look at things, I'm like we are either going to save our own lives by saving each other's children or we are going to be the walking dead. We are going to lose the spirit of life in us If we don't decide that each other's kids are worth, are worth losing it all for. And I think about that baby, and this is why war is so hard for me, like I cannot accept it. I cannot see anything but the cost of everybody and I think about that baby, and I don't even know if Muhammad is alive today, but I know that the choice to fight for him and to ask and to demand the US military actually do good. I feel like that.

Diana Oestreich:

That gave me a shred of life to stay alive in a place that was killing my spirit. And bringing that baby home. This is one baby in a country that was experiencing so much violence and so much of like no regard for their children or their future, or water or electricity. And yet I knew when we brought that baby back, I felt like there was something that came alive, some electrical moment of like heaven, earth, spirit, future that erupted. That said, in the middle of this violent darkness where nobody cares for these women or this baby, like life was just rooted in that place and there was a celebration and it was kind of in that biblical way where you read about like sprain perfume or shoving rings on, like it happened. But I think about that and I think that that is where the life happens and it's really this has been the hardest week for me. So for you to bring that up reminds me that, like, these moments will give us hope and they will be the places that we see more life happen.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

Yeah, and I, you know, listen, I think that you know, as we're talking about children, the children is what I have been holding on to as I've been witnessing and learning, you know, about what has been going on in Gaza and Israel is the children that I've been holding on to and that I've really been trying to encourage other people to hold on to. Because, you know, no matter what the history is right, no matter what, no matter what all the stuff we could sit around and talk about their children, their children who cannot possibly be anything but innocent, who are losing their lives. They're not just losing their lives, they're losing their limbs, they're losing their innocence, they're, you know, some of the hardest pictures I've seen here recently have been obviously the little bitty little body bags. But even harder than that, on some days for me, have been watching some of these children with trauma in their eyes, these children who can't talk, these children who are shaking and can't stop shaking. I mean, puts me on my back and I think that if we could figure out how to just hold on to children, we could see our ways so much more quickly to peace and resolve and come around the world.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

If we don't value nobody else and we ought to value everybody. But if we don't value anybody else, we ought to be able to value children. And I personally believe and I think I'm so attracted to children. I love children so much because I believe they're the next thing to God. I believe they've been in God's presence, you know, the soonest, like you know, a newborn baby smells so good, it's so good, it's so chubby and sweet and warm, because they are straight from God, fresh out of heaven, like they just came here, fresh from God, and I just feel like if we could hold on to the holiness of children, then we could see our way to what's right so much faster. I'm so go ahead, I'm listening.

Diana Oestreich:

You're right and I think that if we as a village aren't willing to fight for all our children, that says so much about who we are. We can say words, we can say whatever we want, but the real humanity test like do we have any spirit of life and love and God in truth in us? Then we will village, we will be the village for all of our children.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

And there will be Everybody's child.

Diana Oestreich:

There will be a buck that stops. And if we can't protect children and say, you know what, you're gonna have to figure it out, but you cannot kill kids, then I feel like our morality, our humanity, we have traded it in service to an agenda, to power, to something, to whatever. But once you trade that away, the children are our receipts for our love and if we lose that, I'm like I don't care. I don't care because they will always tell the truth on us, how we care for each other's children. We will always tell the truth and like so.

Diana Oestreich:

The world says we cannot live without violence, that we need it to survive, to be safe, to be sustainable. And yet the good Lord, jesus, says we won't even start to live until we can give up our need for violence. So I look at him like what's everybody depending on Violence? Violence has never done anything but stolen our kids, killed our hope and shown us to be pretty evil. So I'm like we cannot. If we collaborate with violence, we will lose the things we most need, which is to care for each other's kids, to be a humanity that says no, you cannot ever kill a child, you're gonna have to adult up, figure it out, use diplomacy or just self control, but like once we kill each other's kids, that has broken our futures, that has broken our brotherhood, and like I'm not willing to accept it.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

No matter what, I'm not willing and, as you're talking, I'm thinking about kind of the ways in which I have stumbled into purpose over time, and it's always been through somebody's child, madeline Jones, we talk about Jewish Jones. He was 19 years old when he was convicted, when he was arrested for this crime, right, and he's been on death row since he was 21. In my opinion, a 19-year-old is a child. Like you know, that was Madeline Jones' boy and the first time I met her having a son, he's a little bit of a little thing. He's seven. But when I met Madeline Jones and I realized that her baby was on death row and I thought about what it would mean for my baby to be on death row and for me to try to live out my life every day with my baby on death row. You know children.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

You know, when I got into HIV-AIDS advocacy back in the early 2000s, I had been watching a documentary and at the end of the documentary there was a group of little children in Africa who had been orphaned and they were singing this song in a language and when the song was translated it said many have died, but we are alive.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

What can I do for Jesus? I'm going to tell you, I almost rolled off my bed that night because for children who have lost their moms, their fathers, their entire families through the AIDS pandemic to be standing with a level of joy and enthusiasm, dancing while they are singing this song. Many have died, but I am alive. What can I offering themselves? What can I do for Jesus? Those children put me on a path toward what can I do for people stigmatized and living with HIV in the United States. When I do menstrual equity work, you know I've read stories of young girls in different parts of the world who could not afford proper hygiene and sanitation products and so they would resort to all these different things that were not hygienic and how that just the issue of menstruation would keep them from being able to go to school or women go to work. And when I think about a girl not being able to pursue her education because of a natural biological function, right.

Diana Oestreich:

Or they end up having to drop out of school because they can't and listen. You and I probably have our own like horror stories of when we did not have the right products and it is, and it is over the top, humiliating and like. I'm like, yeah, and I have all the privilege on the planet and yet when I was stuck on that plane bleeding on the seat because, right who? These things just happen, nobody knows it. Like it's coming. I'm like these are just things that rob our dignity and they take women and girls out. And I'm like, and plus, guess what, some girls have to start stepping into this at 10. This is not even fair. I can barely do it. Like I was still struggling with this stuff 30s and 40s. It's still like I don't know how I get caught on wears and how in the world these white pants, you know, but I'm just why did I wear white today?

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

Why? Why?

Diana Oestreich:

I'm just like this is. You know the humanity of it and I love that you keep following people and you keep choosing that AIDS and HIV and the impact of that and the stigma of that Like these are ours to care for. And I think at the same time, I think around the 2000s I was in college and I knew I wanted to do medicine and I traveled to Rwanda and Uganda because and that was kind of the height of the AIDS, hiv and I remember thinking like at that time, medicine wanted nothing to do with people who had HIV or AIDS because there was no cure, mm, hmm, and so they were just left alone and I, something in me, was like that ain't right. And so I remember taking the opportunity to go and I was like I want to work in an AIDS hospital because nobody should be left. Well, whether they are going to be successfully medically or not, they deserve to have all of our care. That's right. And and being in that hospital, you know, just like such a life changer.

Diana Oestreich:

And then you also see the kids. But that was what I noticed too. I'm like these are generations of kids who are having their young parents, their moms and their dads taken like that's a life long loss and in a lot of countries, like if you don't have that support, you're not going to make it. Like not going to make it, you can't physically feed yourself cold yourself if you lose a parent, and so I still think HIV and AIDS is one of those things that we look back. People were afraid to speak out against, people were denying the humanity of people who had this, and yet now I'm like I love that you're still choosing to show up for folks, because that is still here. It just shows us our conscience and our bias and our prejudice when it first happened.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

Yeah, 100 percent. You know that's the thing about pandemics, man, they you know a lot of them don't go away or they are really really slow to go away, and so we're still in the grips of a pandemic worldwide and we're still. People are still suffering from stigma and isolation and lack of care and all those sorts of things, and so always trying conversations to bring it back up because a lot of us is off our radar now, we say, oh, they're really good meds, you know people are doing well, well, I mean, everybody doesn't have access to to what they need, and so, yeah, so it's really really important. But to your point, yes, people and and children, like somebody's child, has always brought me into some fight, some issue, you know, and I'm just, I'm just honored to be any level of help, I'm just honored to serve people. I'm honored to be a vessel that God would even consider using in any way, shape or form, and I just want to do that, I just want to serve, serve God the best I can till I die.

Diana Oestreich:

Well, Cici, how can people join you? How can they? They just link arms with you and say yeah, me too, Like I want to actually show up for other people's kids.

Diana Oestreich:

I want to be a positive force for good at a time when we're told that we can't do anything. We either have to accept things that are unacceptable or will fight. But it'll never change. So how can people? Maybe if you could give me one way people can support you and then one way they can take one action to show up for some of the things that you know matter right now to kids.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

Well post can go to my website. I have a nonprofit called Sing for Change where I do lots, lots of my work through, and so people want to connect and learn more about me. They can go to ccjonesdaviscom and donate to Sing for Change. I've got some really can't do a lot of talking about it right now, but I've got some really important things coming up that I could use people's support for in terms of supporting children and advocating for people and addressing the things that are going on in Israel and Gaza, so I would very much appreciate anybody support that way. Otherwise, people can follow me on socials. I'm at CCJones Davis on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook, and people can always inbox me. You know I'm I don't hear. You know I'm not one of these people that hear from so many people that I can't respond. I can totally respond to you.

Diana Oestreich:

I always tell people I'm like I'm not a bot when I mail out my newsletter right back. And it's fun, because when I tell people I hear about like cool things that are happening like in their neighborhoods, I'm like, no, I love to write back, I'm a letter writer. He's hit me back Right.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

Like totally send me an email. Cc at CCJonesDaviscom. You can reach out to me again on my website and just following along, I try to not. I try to not be. I can be a bit of an introvert, so let me one you. I sometimes it's hard for me to kind of come out of my own little cocoon to say, oh, you know other people want to do this and so you know I need to be more conscious about really telling people what they can do. But definitely following me on socials would be amazing. Donating to think for change, for the work that I do, would be awesome too.

Diana Oestreich:

Awesome. And then, right now, for the things that are like really on your heart right now, what can people do to start to show up?

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

Mm-hmm, Mm, For the things that are on my heart right now. People can take a minute to sit and determine what they believe about children.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

I'm not asking people right now to talk to me about what you believe about Jesus what you believe about the Bible, what you believe about the Old Testament or the New Testament or anybody else's Testament. I'm asking you to sit down and different the depths of your heart from the bottom of your toes. Determine for yourself I'm sorry for these charms. Determine for yourself what do I believe about children? And once you determine what you believe about children, figure out what direction you want to move toward. Do you want to move in the direction of helping children and move and figure out how to move in that direction? Now, moving that direction might mean donating to humanitarian organizations right now that are trying to get life saving, life sustaining aid to children in Gaza. It might mean donating to Doctors Without Borders or some other international organization that has been vetted and we see boosts on the ground and where they're really trying to make some level of impact. If that's what you believe about children, you can move into the humanitarian. It takes nothing for any of us to be humanitarians. It doesn't take a religion for you to be a humanitarian. It does not take you coming from a particular ethnic background for you to be a humanitarian. It takes nothing for you but to be a human to be a humanitarian, a human with a beating heart and a conscious. So think about what you think about children and move in that direction through humanitarian efforts. Now, if you're somebody like me that like to scream and shout, then you take it up a notch and say, okay, now I've donated to such and such I feel good about. Maybe they'll get some water or some food or some bandages or whatever it is. What else we have got to confront? If we care about children, if we made a decision about what we believe about children, then we have got to make some use our voice to confront the political apparatuses that are causing children to lose their lives and limbs, and that means confronting, in the United States of America, our own government. So, finding ways to do that. Well, you say I don't know Biden, I can't call him up, I understand me either, but what we can do is tweet the heck out of him. We can tag him on Instagram, we can share the content that we are seeing on social media with our communities, because a lot of people need to be bombarded until this surface cracks and our hearts break open, and so I know there's a big.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

A lot of people feel real strongly about putting like sensitivity things. Warnings trigger warnings, and usually I'm that way, but I'm not that way when it comes to children. So I'm going to share the heck out of anything that involves the killing of these people, particularly these children, with no trigger warnings. You know why? Because I want you to be triggered. I want you to be so dog on triggered not to go somewhere and jump off a bridge. I want you to be triggered so that your heart is broken open and that you come running to the front lines or some lines somewhere to say what can I do? Who do I have to talk to? Who do I write? Who do I tweet? What do I do to help stop this?

Diana Oestreich:

And the greatest thing that I think we can do to save kids lives today, tomorrow, is confronting our own government and demanding that they stop sending the bombs and bullets to the groups, to the government that is bombing these kids. I'm like man. If that is our only I mean, our only act is just to say we're going to step in front of the violence that is being shipped from our country to bomb these kids, then that's on us, and I think we can do it. Yup, I do too. And yeah, there's people like, well, I can't fix things, I'm like, oh, but guess what we all need? We need somebody to step in front of us and our kids in the violence it's coming at them.

Diana Oestreich:

And right now that ammunition and those bombs and those bullets and the tanks and the Hellfire missiles, they are coming from our own country. And so I think that is as a mom and as a human being, Like you said. I love what you said. You're like we're a humanitarian. You don't need to have a faith, you don't have to have a religion, you don't have to have a supernatural experience. All you have to do is say if that was me, that's right, that's right. If that was me and my child. What would I desperately want people to do? And then you go ahead and you do it for them.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

That's right, that's it.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

I love that you said that, diana, because that's with the bottom line. What if you were in that situation, if you happen to be born in another part of the world and something like this was going on, what would you want somebody to do for you? And if you were in that situation such a desperate situation you wouldn't want somebody to sit on the other side of the water and look at a news story and say mm, mm, mm. So sad and turn the channel Right. People do not simply need our empathy. The scripture talks about how Jesus was moved by compassion. It is not enough to shake our heads and feel bad. It's not enough to say, oh, that's the saddest thing. It's not enough to sit up here, for me to sit up here on this podcast and share some tears about what's happening, I have to be moved by this compassion that I feel for people. Right, I've got to be willing to open up my mouth or to do anything, any small thing.

Diana Oestreich:

And the science even connects our resilience to our actions. If we see horrible things, if something disaster happens in our city, if we are part of digging people out, if we are part of handing out water, if we are moving our bodies, it actually restores and heals our spirits, yeah.

Diana Oestreich:

I know that, and so I'm like man. This is all connected, like this is for us, this is by us, we are on the line for this, and I am so grateful for your voice, cece, and I'm so grateful that you are challenging us to show up for kids. So, as we wrap up, I always want to ask these three little questions for people Because, again, we are moving in our purpose, but we're also people that are made for joy and we're made for those small things that make us who we are, and so I'm going to ask you four quick, quick, rapid fire questions, and there's no wrong answer. You can answer it however you want. This is not how to be deep.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

This is just you getting to be Cece, All right.

Diana Oestreich:

so what is your purpose?

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

My purpose is to take the presence of God into everyday places.

Diana Oestreich:

And how do you play?

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

I play through washing my hair, styling my hair and buying things off Amazon. That's how I play.

Diana Oestreich:

Amen. What is your superpower?

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

Compassion and authenticity.

Diana Oestreich:

Yeah, it is. And last one, my favorite question what is bringing you joy right now?

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

OK, not a lot. To be honest, what is bringing me joy? Oh, you know what brought me joy this week. Let me tell you what made me feel like a good mama this week. So, when you like, so focus out into, like, what's going on in the world, sometimes you have to really be intentional about, ok, how am I kid? How are my kids doing? Yeah, right, like, are my kids all right? And so my little boy, honor, who is seven this week and don't judge me people he probably should have known this some time ago, but we just got through learning the Lord's Prayer like to recite it, ok. So it brought me so much joy this week for this little boy to be able to get down to the forever and ever amen of the Lord's Prayer. Yo, that brought me so much joy. Nothing has made me smile more this week than that.

Diana Oestreich:

That is beautiful. I'm going to share one of mine because I think I told you before we got on, this has been a very hard week of me. So my moment, my sweet, my youngest, is 15. And spring break was last week. We did a road trip out to Montana to go snowboarding and skiing. He was like so excited because he had been like doing this more than anybody else in the family, and last year he was kind of a scaredy cat. So this year he was like number one in our family. Three hours in he falls and he snaps his collarbone in half. So he did not have a good week. So just Monday we got back and they and I brought him into surgery and so he's 15.

Diana Oestreich:

He's super brave, super cool. He's making the nurses laugh, he's making jokes with the anesthetist. But I'm his mom, so I'm like how do I take care of you? So he's playing it super cool. He goes through it like a champ and anyways, we get home that night and he finds me and he's like mom, I just want to tell you he's like you were so there for me, like thank you so much for like doing the whole thing with me and making me feel so safe and so good. And then he gives me his little like wink and he's like total mom W moment and I'm like you know what I'm going to take this I'm going to take like any small thing of where my people feel loved by just the day of just showing up together doing the paperwork, handing the crackers, you know, just like the stuff that you don't think matters.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

Yes, but no one.

Diana Oestreich:

Yeah, so that was kind of like my. That was my tiny thing giving me joy.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

Good for you. That gives me joy, that's awesome.

Diana Oestreich:

Man well, cece, thank you so much for being here, and I'll put all of your socials and the things that we talked about in the notes. So everybody, follow Cece, cheer her on, continue to show up with her, because this is women who are changing the world.

Rev Cece Jones Davis:

Thank you, Diane. It's been a blessing. I love you. I really do. Thank you for having me.

Diana Oestreich:

Man, I love you too.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Diana K Oestreich

Host