We are in this together…

Kwanzaa Day 3

Principle #3  Ujima (collective work and responsibility) calls on us, to build and maintain our community together and to make our brothers’ and sisters’ problems our problems and to solve them together. This principle teaches us the shared responsibility to work and build the good family, community, society and world. It takes a mindful village to prosper and it is a joy and blessing for each of us to participate.

Remembrance:
I love supporting my family, friends, and clients.  As a kid, I loved being called on to help. That feeling of solving a problem and helping to ease someone’s load is one I still cherish today.  I love helping because over the years so many people have helped me in too many ways to count.  They have watched my kids so I could work, they have gifted me money and food. They have pointed me in the direction of the perfect job, house or opportunity. They have introduced me to colleagues that have become friends and friends that have become family. They have held my hand, listened to my problems and wiped my tears.

It has taken a village to raise me into the woman I am today.

As this year ends who has helped to make you into the person you are today?

Reflection:
Community is not always easy to build. Not always easy to maintain and changes over time.  New members join, others leave and yet the work continues. I reflect on what it means to be in community and how I want to show up in my family, my work, and the world. I think back on the ways I have fallen short over the past year as well as the ways I surprised myself.

In what ways have you struggled and in what ways have you been victorious?

Re-commitment
Kwanzaa was created in 1966 by Dr. Maulana Karenga, professor of Africana Studies at California State University, Long Beach, author and scholar-activist who stresses the indispensable need to preserve, continually revitalize and promote African American culture.

Kwanzaa is a cultural holiday, not a religious one. It is built on the most elevated and liberating practices a culture can share. It’s about being good to your people (YOU decided who those are) and the world. It’s about self-transformation, love and celebrating lives well lived, and standing beside one another as we fight, love, live and prosper.

I love my community and renew my support to their needs, their hopes, their dreams and their liberation.

How will you be good and generous to your community in 2017?

We show the world our highest self when we are in community.

Here is to more shared good in the world.