Dear Friends,
In this time of turning, I contemplate the miracles of last year.
It began with saving some lives in Kenya.
As you may recall, back in 2002 Kitche Magak and I agreed to ‘create community through performance across borders local and global’. With scores of residents in Brooklyn, New York and Kisumu, Kenya, we built BrooKenya!—a web of stories lived and told, told and lived. We spun the boundaries of colonialism, vast distance, and fissures of home turf into the connective tissue of story, kinship and possibility. When violence exploded in Kenya a year ago, the new neural pathways we created allowed us to funnel money and morale from Americans to Kitche and friends in Africa. With great courage, they passed these gifts across a tribal divide—buying and delivering food to the starving and persecuted huddled in police stations, speaking out on the radio to end the aggression that threatened all. Our small piece of netting was knit with other grassroots networks. Together we kept people alive in Kisumu during the month before international aid agencies arrived.
We know how many people were killed in Kenya during that time. But we don’t know the number of people who might have died but did not because of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. News of death and destruction is never the whole story. Else, as my friend Kitche says, ‘we would have packed it in a long time ago’.
I reflect on this as our global market economy goes through a treacherous but much needed restructuring. We hope for it to get better, and sooner rather than later. In the meantime, we turn to the commerce of community—an economy of offering, receiving and passing along gifts; these contracts of the heart we often call love. This ancient, subtle humming is always there, singing our world into being underneath the grand orchestrations of financial exchange. With the din of the trading floor muted, we can more easily hear this clear simple voice. Witness charities overwhelmed by volunteers here in New York City.
One miracle was big enough to make international headlines. We elected a son of Africa and European-American stock as president of the United States of America.
Born as I was on the cusp of Jim Crow segregation and the Civil Rights Movement, it is almost more than I can comprehend. Signaling a fundamental change in the social infrastructure of my country and perhaps the world, it requires nothing less than rewriting my history—changing my perception of a lifetime. With a black/multi-racial president in the White House and the financial system in shreds, the present has gone beyond our imaginings. If we baby boomers are to fulfill the promise of our youth—the one we made to future generations—this seems the moment to look at ourselves and all that we know with new eyes.
Earlier in the year, before he passed into the spirit world, I had the privilege to meet Grandfather Leon Secatero, a Navajo elder and teacher. Leon spoke of the last 500 years of exploitation and destruction—of people and planet. He then humbly urged us all to set aside the hostilities of this past. I hear his soft voice calling, “What we do over the next 15 years will decide the next 500 years and the next 500 years after that…”
You are each making miracles: Filmmaker Ronit at JustVision in Jerusalem supporting citizen Israeli and Palestinian peace builders (please visit if you’d like to help); Maria taking a moment to celebrate in the midst of supplying relief services in the war ravaged Congo at ActionAid International; Ruby pioneering participatory arts learning in the classrooms of Singapore; David expanding the capacities of people with Parkinson’s Disease through Dance for PD; Eugene training young community theatre artists in Holland at the Community Art Lab; Ximena championing indigenous miners in the mountains of Ecuador; Cindy at Brandeis University nurturing the contribution of the arts to coexistence; Donna and Yvonne raising a loving Devin across the hall; and all others unsung…
I look forward to making the next 15 years with you.
Love in this time of turning,
kg