Happy New Year Revolutionaries!! As I write this today, one of my good friends is at the local hospital being induced to give birth to her new baby. I’m conscious today of what a blessing this new life is, how excited we all are to meet this new little human, and how important it is that we each value our lives and the gifts we each bring to our collective community. Imagine we each could look at each other with the hopeful and loving eyes with which we look at newborn babies. Imagine if we could commit to creating an environment where every human, new and old, has the comfort and support to grow into their most authentic and fulfilled selves. Imagine we listened to each other with that kind of patience and grace. Imagine we worked together to intentionally create spaces and opportunities for each other to grow and for us to be known to each other in meaningful ways. This is what I dream of with Revolution Now.
I think with new life there comes an opportunity to reflect on our own. To think about what a gift it is to be alive in this time in history and to celebrate having our chance to participate in what Martin Luther King Jr called “the long arc of the moral universe”. Like every generation that came before us, we have unique challenges that will define our time and we are blessed with the opportunity to meet them and to keep bending our world towards justice and love. With the passing of giants like Sidney Poitier, I am left thinking about how we best learn from and build upon the enormous strides of that generation. As a white woman, what I know for sure is that I don’t know. I don’t know what it feels like to be a Black Canadian in 2022, just as I don’t know what it feels like to be Indigenous or a new refugee to Canada. What I know is that there is great variance in those experiences and that there are common shared experiences that I want to better understand. It is my hope that in our lifetime and in the work of Revolution Now that we start to dismantle the racial segregation and inequality that still exists in Canada today. I hope that through sharing art, such as our newest piece by Indigenous artist Keith Gattie, that conversations will start where we begin to think deeply about our place on this land and how we want to live.
This month, we are looking for children and young people who would like to write welcoming messages to Afghan refugee children. We hope that when they write these cards that feature the welcoming messages by an Indigenous artist, that there are also conversations about colonization. We hope that this will invite conversations about what it means to enjoy the safety of home, as well as, how we can each uphold a Nation to Nation relationship with Indigenous people. We also look forward to being able to donate the proceeds of this campaign to the Indigenous program Gwekwaadziwin Miikan Youth Mental Health & Addiction Program on Manitoulin Island. The same Island where our artist Keith Gattie’s family originated from. The same program where my friend, with today’s newborn baby, is employed. I believe that none of these connections are accidental and that we have all found each other in this work to do something that is bigger than ourselves. My good friend, Pastor Tricia Wright, once preached about how love is truly the most revolutionary act. As we begin this new year, this Black History Month, and this new life of my friend, I hope that all of us can be transformative and revolutionary in the way we love each other. May we use our days to create the world we dream about. May we emanate love and use our lives to be transformative and revolutionary.
Let’s Go Change The World,
Megan