007—Questions to Close the Year
Dear Reader,
In the final days of 2022, we are reflecting on the power of a question. There are lifelong questions we carry within us. Ancestral questions that we inherit, reverberating in our movement against colonialism and late-stage capitalism. There are questions that bring us joy, and help us reflect on where our ease lives. Questions to disrupt, that lead us somewhere new, somewhere we can live in our fullness and our multiplicity. In a question’s formulation, new worlds and ways of being are conjured.
It is with that energy that we present the last newsletter of this year. A departure into collective wonder we can hold and reflect upon together.
A Question for Worldbuilding
“Do we want ‘a seat at the table’ or do we want to build other tables? Do we even need tables at all? What if we had a treehouse instead, or perhaps a picnic with a cluster of blankets? Do we need to keep the structure or the system, or do we want to build something else?”
—From Issue Three, “Envisioning Equity,” Mia Birdsong on Freedom, Equity, and Interdependence
A Question for Interdependence
“Most of us are looking for belonging, but we’ve become enamored by belongings. In the process of extraction, do we ever return what we take in full measure? Sustainability is balance. It’s taking and returning, giving and receiving. It’s not independence. It’s interdependence. I know we can’t go back, but I think we can go forward, perhaps by bringing forward practices from the past that were more in alignment with a sustainable way of life. It’s really shifting our mindsets from ‘carrying’ capacity to ‘caring’ capacity.”
—Ramsay Taum, from Issue Four, “A Sense of Place,” Reverence over Reference: Ramsay Taum speaks with Isabel Flower about the meaning of place-based values
A Question to Help Return You to Your Body
“When we are allowing something new to happen, it won’t always feel welcome if we have previously felt safe in another form. There’s a spiritual component to understanding that there are things that you haven’t yet felt that are possible to you. I love how somatics opened me up to that possibility. How do we join, within the practice of living, elements of both protection and of unraveling?
In terms of placemaking, this requires reactivating relationships inside of you and between you and the world. So yes, embodiment is a way of making place. It’s saying, ‘My body is a complete place from which I have relationships with myself and others. It is where I am.’”
—Prentis Hemphill, from Issue Four, “A Sense of Place,” Being Where We Are: Prentis Hemphill on the Body as Place
A Question of Care
“Regardless of anything and everything negative that’s said about our communities, I see the people stand up for each other every single time. It never fails. No matter what county or community I’m serving in, the people stand up with the little bit that they got and they try to hold on together. That’s the hope that I need to see. That’s why I don’t complain. I get up and I do my part. And I also think that, well, the earth is going to take care of the earth. That’s why all the stuff is happening.
The earth is going to evolve, and we will have to also, one way or another, if we want to have a place here. I do feel that if we get together and really build networks of self-determination, we could sustain. The water is coming, the storms are coming, we know what’s happening. But if I know the water is coming, do I teach my people how to swim? Absolutely.”
—Valencia Gunder, from Issue Four, “A Sense of Place,” “Teaching the Way We Needed to Be Taught: Valencia Gunder in conversation with Marquise Stillwell”
Sending you ease as we transition into a new year. Thank you for reflecting with us.
Sincerely,
The Deem Team