For many, January is filled with new possibility. Only a baker’s dozen days into this new year, we’ve watched new tragedy unfold (and still unfolding) out in California. It’s absolutely shattering. As is all devastation, whether by the arms of nature or the hands of man.
My original intention this month was to ask you to go inward. I am still calling for that, but with the caveat that we do not forget nor forsake our neighbors. I have always viewed the entire earth as my home. I come from Brooklyn, but no land should feel strange under my feet. I want us to remember our humanity. I am stunned by the level of callousness on display online. Not in my circles, thankfully, but this odd idea that LA of all places is a playground strictly comprised of the rich so they don’t deserve our empathy, our resources, our compassion, our energy. It’s a bizarre way to live. It is inhuman. It is reminiscent of how people react to tragedy in the global south. It is a mirror for the soullessness of man…