A year ago, I was enthused to enter a new decade with a renewed vision for my next chapter of life and community. How I was going to get to my vision, I didn’t have all figured out, but I was determined to start trying new and different things to get to a new reality. One of the ways I gain inspiration and seed new growth is through travel. I ended February 2020 by visiting my sister in the Oakland- San Francisco Bay Area. While in the Bay Area, I visited the de Young Museum in San Francisco to see the art exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983. One painting, by Carolyn Lawrence, kept my attention and has stayed with me since the museum trip. In the piece “Black Children Keep Your Spirits Free”, Carolyn invokes the blissful, playful, creative nature of liberation and freedom, states of being that children can so greatly display, while also giving warning and an antidote to the harms of the world.

Whenever I look at this image, it appeals to so many senses in me. The colors, the words, the faces, the people all seem to be in motion, giving life to the painting itself and the messages the painting sends. The painting makes me imagine a world where justice, healing, thriving, unity, peace, and liberation are for all and abundant. As if it could speak, the painting asks me ‘what will it take to create a world where we do not have to warn to keep our spirits, but the world instead uplifts’? The painting calls me to reflect on the role I can play to make my better world dreams a reality. Each time I look at Black Children Keep Your Spirits Free, I think- we still have work to do. Carolyn’s painting is nearly 40 years old but is still relevant today because racism continues to be our greatest challenge. The big moments of spring and summer 2020, the murder of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless other Black people, along with the Coronavirus becoming a global pandemic, tell me that those moments are moments in a movement that extends longer than you or I. These pivotal moments of 2020 shine light on injustice and inequity that already existed and worsen right before our eyes.

This is a movement, not a moment. The moments of the movement to end racism are calling you to concern yourself with the problem, to study the problems roots and complexity and impacts, to progress with others and to do the work. This work might mean organizations working to increase diversity by creating work culture and environments for all employees to stay and thrive or your family and friends having more conversations about race at the dinner (or Facetime) table. The movement to end racism is also calling you to dig deep, deeper than you have before; to challenge your thinking, to stretch how and with whom you show up, to have a greater impact, and to create a new reality. The movement to end racism is calling you to reimagine the world, to move into what is possible, and to do the work required for building a better world. This work might mean disrupting where systems harm by resisting the status quo and structures that hold inequity in place or creating cultures of belonging where people most impacted are supported to tell the truth and systems trust those most impacted by taking their lead. Yes, there is much work to do and the work will be hard at times. Racism is a trap, but we can choose to get and be free. We must be brave, creative, and bold to let the dreams and hopes and imagination for a better world be our work. This is a movement, not a moment, and the movement needs our creativity to both end racism and to create a world where, like Carolyn’s painting predicts, our total beings are truly free.

Today, I ask you to rekindle, ignite, “catch and keep your fire” for the movement toward new vision and make the movement, not just the moments, your work.