Wow…having a deep experience of Detroit tonight.
I went to my first Detroit Kwanzaa event tonight. There were so many people there – artists, elders, organizers, city council. My friend and comrade Jenny Lee was being honored with an award.
I was particularly touched by this timeless woman Njia Kai. I have had the honor of meeting her and her energy just drops you down deep.
She said words that hit me so hard I can’t get them out of my mind:
“I don’t know impossibility.
I don’t know any excuses…we got through slavery, people.
I am recommitting myself to being busy in my community.”
I am recommitting myself to being busy!
I have been complaining a little more than usual, needing the family time and rest that begins tomorrow. But for 2010? I am recommitting to being BUSY. And positive about the healing work I get to do, because really, that’s what it is. Every piece of work I do is about building back up that sense of wholeness that we’re missing in ourselves, in our families, communities, organizations, lives.
To I spoke with local media friend Adele Nieves, who told me that she recently learned to crochet from her mother. She told me to ask my mother to teach me something…I am excited to do so, and encourage you to do the same.
Finishing up a piece on multiracial identity in organizing for YES! magazine which is truly a joy to write, and my work is a constant learning.
Its almost 2010, in a way that makes me feel like gasping when I think about how the turn of the century just happened, and so much has flown by. Things have come to pass that I have celebrated and grieved, things I would not have believed, had I been told a decade ago. This is teaching me to truly open myself up to the completely unimaginable in the next decade. I want to feel this well-worked, well-lived, and interested in 2020.
I do not know impossibility – that’s a life philosophy right there.