6 things that I know to be true.
relationships = because word is bond. When we listen to each other and believe in one another and are willing to experiment with new ways of being we embody magic. We are seeds and blossoms containing life that is incomprehensible and waiting to be unleashed. Recently, a group described transactional relationships as chips and transformation relationships as sourdough. I find that some bags of chips are delicious (and plenty are unpalatable) though most sourdough loaves are divine.
Two questions about relationships:
1) What have you learned about yourself during the pandemic?
2) How did your teenage years inform your adulthood?
intersectionality = race and intersectionality are in the core of what I am and how I relate to other beings. Intersectionality is the combination of the many characteristics, identities and qualities that define us and used to commit genocide and to oppress us. We are still learning how to hold a larger sense of the vastness inherent in each one of us by better seeing and hearing one another.
Two questions about intersectionality:
1) Where were you born?
2) Who are your people?
death = as finite beings, our life is defined by our death and how we live prior to the end. As living things, all of us and all that abounds around us will die. Therefore, our lives are colored by the choices we make from the infinite desires that we contain.
Two questions about death (adapted from Joan Halifax):
1) What is the greatest fear you have of your death?
2) What choices are you making now to not have that happen?
slowing down = technology and capitalism tempt (and compel) us to be faster, multitask constantly and act as if where we are is inadequate. Curiously, the possibilities expand when we slow down.
Two questions about slowing down:
1) When is the most enjoyable part of your day? Why?
2) How would you describe the pace of your morning, midday, evening?
asking more questions = I was 22 years old and being interviewed for the Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs in St. Louis, seated with five other interviewees. We sat in front of a Black woman who looked at us. She waited. And we waited. After a few, awkward minutes, I realized that she was not going doing anything more than sit there, so I asked a question. And then another. Over the course of the next hour, I asked her at least 20 questions while my five peers asked less than 10 questions combined. Coro instilled in me the art of asking a question – specifically, how to not ask yes/no questions and ask more open-ended questions that begin with Who?, What?, Why?, When?, Where?, and How? 20 years later, I still ask many, many, many questions.
Two questions about asking questions:
1) What do you know (K)? Know that you don’t know (KDK)? And don’t know that you don’t know (DKDK)?
2) When were the significant moments in your life?
faith = things we can’t see or know and dreams that we won’t realize this lifetime. Yet, we cultivate justice and love so we may be something beautiful with each other just as our ancestors who toppled slavery, royalty, and feudalism did, who expanded rights for girls and women and people of color, who recognized the inherent dignity of children and the incarcerated and the ostracized.
I observe a collective practice of faith in a small group of people of eSwatini who live to topple a 70 year monarchy and replace it with democracy. PUDEMO is their political home: a political party that was banned more than 30 years ago and still prohibited today yet it continues to nurture the dreams of people seeking freedom from tyranny and nepotism.
Two questions about faith:
1) What are 3 things that you know to be true?
2) Where in your body do you experience freedom?