Spirituality And Spiritual Life Give Us The

We Are Rarely Able To Interact Only With Folks Like Ourselves, Who Think As We Do. No Matter How Much Some Of Us Deny This Reality And Long For The Safety And Familiarity Of Sameness, Inclusive Ways Of Knowing And Living Offer Us The Only True Way To Emancipate Ourselves From The Divisions That Limit Our Minds And Imaginations.

I Believe That This Nation Can Only Heal From The Wounds Of Racism If We All Begin To Love Blackness. And By That I Don't Mean That We Love Only That Which Is Best Within Us, But That We're Also Able To Love That Which Is Faltering, Which Is Wounded, Which Is Contradictory, Incomplete.

Think Of All The Women You Know Who Will Not Allow Themselves To Be Seen Without Makeup. I Often Wonder How They Feel About Themselves At Night When They Are Climbing Into Bed With Intimate Partners. Are They Overwhelmed With Secret Shame That Someone Sees Them As They Really Are? Or Do They Sleep With Rage That Who They Really Are Can Be Celebrated Or Cared For Only In Secret?

It Is Obvious That Many Women Have Appropriated Feminism To Serve Their Own Ends, Especially Those White Women Who Have Been At The Forefront Of The Movement; But Rather Than Resigning Myself To This Appropriation I Choose To Re-appropriate The Term “feminism,” To Focus On The Fact That To Be “feminist” In Any Authentic Sense Of The Term Is To Want For All People, Female And Male, Liberation From Sexist Role Patterns, Domination, And Oppression.

The Function Of Art Is To Do More Than Tell It Like It Is-it’s To Imagine What Is Possible.