i can feel all the anger + frustration + anguish in the united states right now and my heart is breaking.

i don’t know what to say, for many reasons, but it feels important to say something.

here is what i know.

the civil rights movement occurred from 1954-1968.

1968 was less than 50 years ago.

no matter how much i might want to believe otherwise, i have heard enough + seen enough + read enough to know that racism is not dead, privilege does exist, and sometimes i am part of the problem.

i want to live in a world in which everyone feels seen + heard + valued.

i want to live in a world in which everyone truly feels free.

perhaps it sounds naive, but i believe that such a world is possible.

maybe not now. maybe not for generations. maybe systems will have to be dismantled.

still, i choose to believe it is possible.

as i sit with hard questions, i commit (again) to this.

i will check my privilege.

i will listen; i will learn; i will seek to understand.

i will notice the way i divide the world into us and them, and meet each person as an individual.

i will not fear my blind spots, my darkness, the many times i will fail at this. i will acknowledge them & do the work necessary & send love to myself through all of it.

above all, i commit to love.

i was wondering how this post connected to my mission – to remind you of beauty + wonder.

perhaps it doesn’t.

but i do know there is beauty in everything: beauty in rising up, beauty in coming together, beauty in what seems like darkness.

this part is for me, a reminder of my touchstones.

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

~ Solzhenitsyn

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people.

~ C.S. Lewis