week 25/23

Inspire. June.

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Inspire is a little late this month…okay, it’s a lot late this month. It’s not that I’ve been procrastinating as much as I’ve been absorbing and acting on the plethora of inspiration that I’ve been exposed to in the last several weeks. Sometimes there is a lull or a slight time of unknowing what I’ll write about, but this month was the opposite. How do I choose from the things that inspired me this month, and continue to inspire me? This paragraph formed the introduction to a much longer article on some of the inspirational things I’ve been exposed to throughout June; however, I decided to share some stories from last night’s World Peace & Prayer Day Interfaith Service that I attended at the Historic St. Kateri Tekakwitha Shrine in upstate New York and save the longer writing for another day.

World Peace and Prayer Day was started in 1994 by Avrol Looking Horse to honor the birth two years before of a white buffalo calf, which was a sign of changing times to come as well as the “coming of the mending of the Hoop of All Nations”. She was named Miracle. June 21st was chosen because it is a powerful time to pray for peace as well as being the Summer Solstice and the longest day of the year. It is an offering and hope to heal all of Mother Earth’s gifts that live on the earth, including the Earth herself.

Speak evil of no one. If you can say no good of a person, then be silent..

Let not your tongues betray you into evil,

For these are words of our Creator.

Let all strive to cultivate friendship with those who surround them.

Handsome Lake, Iroquois Prophet
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Pride Quotes

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Quotations from Harvey Milk, James Baldwin, Leslie Jordan, Audre Lorde, Marsha P. Johnson, Elliot Page. Art by KBW. (c)2023

A sample of quotations from a diverse group of LGBTQIA and Allies.

  • “Gender is who you are, and sexuality is who you want.” — C.N. Lester, “Trans Like Me: A Journey for All of Us”
  • “Cut the ending. Revise the script. The man of her dreams is a girl.” — Julie Anne Peters, “Keeping You a Secret”
  • “When all Americans are treated as equal, no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all more free.” — Barack Obama
  • “Love is never wrong.” — Melissa Etheridge
  • “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” — E.E. Cummings
  • “Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.” — Brené Brown, “The Gifts of Imperfection”
  • “Where there is love, there is life.” — Mahatma Gandhi
  • “We declare that human rights are for all of us, all the time: whoever we are and wherever we are from; no matter our class, our opinions, our sexual orientation.” — Ban Ki-moon
  • “To realize a world of equality and dignity for all, we will have to change laws and policies; we will also have to change hearts and minds.” — Rick Parnell
  • “Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?”— Ernest J. Gaines
  •  “What I liked about the rainbow is that it fits all of us. It’s all the colors. It represents all the genders. It represents all the races. It’s the rainbow of humanity.” — Gilbert Baker

More quotes can be found here.

Juneteenth

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This is the first full year that Juneteenth National Independence Day has been a federally recognized holiday. I had heard of the celebrations only a handful of years before this declaration by President Biden, and I think I speak for many when I say it’s about time.

We’re not free until we’re all free.

It’s important on this day (and throughout the year) to not only celebrate and commemorate the freeing of all the enslaved people after the Civil War, but also to look at how we can be proactive and ally ourselves in the fight for modern freedom. That is recognizing the disparities that still exist and acknowledging that they’ve always been there, and they were written into the system, Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution themselves. We must recognize this.

NPR article about Juneteenth. Check out the Google Doodle also!

Below is my replica of the Juneteenth flag, designed by Ben Haith and Lisa Jeanne Graf.

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