Each birth brings into the world equal parts joy and pain.  The challenge of being human requires us to hold both with our palms open.

As I usher in the new year in a new city, in a new job I am reminded of writing and thinking that I began nearly 5 years ago.  Reflecting on the enormous transitions that 2017 brought to me personally, I am ready to begin sharing that work.  It is work that asks how we as a culture are ready to commit to ending the European project on race that was begun some 400+ years ago and that has cost countless lives.  The end to this project will not involve “color blindness” and simplistic multi-culturalism, but rather will ask us to strengthen and broaden our capacity to understand the gorgeous and complex variations that are humankind.  For me this begins with deepening our understanding of embodiment.  My developing work explores embodiment as a reflection of “being” as expressions of birth, death, thought, time, action, earth and love.  The affirmation above comes from this work.

May we all find many blessings as we embrace a world that is not just about variations in color, but also variations in ability, gender, sexuality, and a host of other ways of being human that we haven’t even explored yet.  Happy New Year 2018!

– ALD