My Cozy Casita

It is important that I am not invisible during this point in time.  Raising our voices, we break the invisibility and we become our myriad of colors and shades, our diverse selves.  This is a tense point in history, the rise of this new wave of fascism.  It had started with the first term of D.T. but this second term created more intense crisis after crisis - a plan by the entire right wing being placed in motion.  This is how human cruelty creates a cradle.

And yet this is also when I learn from the ancestors again - this time Etty Hillesum.  She is being quite a muse.  She teaches me to resist going under the despair and to look at the current events from the other side of my own protection.  To raise and share my voice.  To let it be known that I am living in the new world now, even amongst the birth of these horrors.

Of course Etty Hillesum is not the only ancestor I am inspired by - for all our African Mothers who resisted and survived captivity and colonization have paved the road we all can walk on.  If they were able to survive all manner of things, their daughters can survive many things.  We can create community, care for children and each other.  We can mother ourselves into a new life.  

It is important that I see, I am living these moments with Bettsy by my side, as her wife.  It is important to say, I am living my Iyaworaje during this year regardless of what is being destroyed - I am reborn.  Life is movement no matter where the current goes.  

The world is--people are changing.  People are constructing methods of resistance that have no faith in anything but the community.  That in itself is wonderful even if the reason we are doing it is a horrible collapse.  This means we all understand the power of the collective.  I am glad that I get to see and work through these beginnings of collective moments, at the beginning of my spiritual vocation.  

Dressed in all white I will celebrate Valentine’s Day with my wife in our house, away from all noise - in this space we have created so I can listen to Olofi and the Orishas.  It is humbling to be asked to celebrate Orisha above all things, above all crisis and above all fear.  I celebrate them, for they are life - they guide us to be in good relationship with Olorun and the Ancestors.  

And they push us to find our real power.