Celebrating Our Differences
Service is sacred. Service is a holy thing — if it is offered cleanly. What does that mean?! When we offer service, are we offering it with open hands and no expectation of reciprocation or anticipation of garnering favor? Serving with expectations or guiding demands is not an…
While the word ‘Serve’ has many meanings, in the context of this commentary, we ponder what serving one’s time in prison means and whether the time served intersects with eventual redemption. Hundreds of thousands of men and women serve prison sentences for wrongful acts they have committed. They…
Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash Do you serve yourself before others? Do you serve yourself at all? Have we been conditioned to give more to others than ourselves? The answer is many times a resounding yes. We have always been told to give more than…
I began asking myself this question very early in life. Maybe I thought that my superpower was that of smoothing things out and improving the lot of others. We initially lived in a four-room wood house near one of the largest train switchyards in the south. During…
I have had some great opportunities in my life. Looking back, I also think I have had a few different lives. The common thread with most of it has been the creative process. Before I felt confident in my own abilities, I just simply assisted other extraordinarily talented…
By Rhonda Hardy My love of dolls goes way, way back to Christmas time as a little girl. Christmas was magical and meant that I was going to get a new doll. – My first memorable doll was the Tiny Tears™ doll. Some reason I mainly…
It was Thanksgiving Day in Atlanta, and I participated in the Hosea Williams “Feed the Homeless Thanksgiving Day Dinner” event. The adults partnered with high school students from the area who had volunteered to serve the meals. It was a nice day outside. When my 15-year-old partner…
By Tekla A. Syers Dedicated to Jaclyn Moore-Bedford Don’t let your thoughts and words OOlead you to distress. Don’t think words of distress OOor darkness about another OOfor their roots run deep OOand sprout OOin your experience OOas unpleasantness. No OOto stress-inducing words OOfrom others. They…
Are we free yet? Whose country is this? In this country, people vote for all sorts of reasons. Voting is visceral. Voting is intellectual. Voting is protest, praise, and remembrance. In this country, we all get to choose to vote…or do we? Throughout our collective history, voting…
Here it is, 2022. I never thought I would be compelled out of my middle-age pandemic stupor to revisit issues I lived through in the 1960s and stare them squarely in the face today. I grew up at a time when info about African Americans was relegated to…