This IS a time of great challenge matched by great opportunity. The old approaches and hierarchies are rapidly losing relevance and power. We are in the middle of a ‘re-set’, where new operating systems will supplant those that don’t work anymore. Our role will be to midwife the new while gently hospicing the old systems.  I’m with those who say we need to evolve beyond hierarchies of diversity. I find them to be fallout of internalized oppression, paying forward residual introjected negative images and fighting for perceived limited pieces of the pie. Divided we fall. Every community needs to work on sexual orientation, on their own racism, sexism, classism, agism…. In the same way that ducking addressing sexual orientation is shameful, I’m especially pained to see folks who focus on race marginalize and ignore the needs of Native/Indigenous communities. Clinton’s Commission on Race absolutely refused to seat any Native Americans, undercutting the entire premise of their work with their hierarchical ranksim. Until we are healthy on all the topics, we are fully healthy on none. Interestingly, the environmental movement is coming to understand that they can’t succeed without simultaneously working on the social justice impacts and the damage to our spirits from environmental degradation. I’m happy to see it, and I’m sad that the same kind of thinking hasn’t reached more deeply into the ranks of those who would create a positively multicultural world. And so we are called to gently hospice old attitudes and lead with light and optimism toward true inclusion.

Tis a privilege to live in these times and have such clear work ahead of us!