Four Garments in My Suitcase
Over the years, my beliefs have changed as I have continued striving to stay faithful. Sometimes successfully. Sometimes not so much. I am far from perfect. What I aim for instead is mindful awareness.
I was formed in traditions that taught me to speak about love, justice, and responsibility with conviction. I learned how to lead, how to “do” ministry, how to organize, how to hope on behalf of others. I also learned—often through failure—that the frameworks I inherited for power, truth, inclusion, and resources did not always serve the very lives I claimed to serve. At times, they did not serve me either.
I have had to reckon with my own shortcomings along these lines, and I have sought to correct them where I could. What shifted over time were not my values, but the assumptions beneath them.
Life has a way of revealing the limits of belief systems—in the world around us and within us. The collisions I’ve encountered have occurred both beyond the confines of my mind and squarely within it. Some of the systems that once guided me were familiar, efficient, even well-intentioned. Over time, I came to see that they no longer served life, or my own capacity to remain aligned with my best intentions.
As I pivoted my focus away from limitation and toward more conscious, relational ways of being, clarity began to emerge. What follows are four beliefs I now hold as lived conclusions shaped by experience, reflection, accountability, and repair.
Power does not need domination to be real.
I was taught—explicitly and implicitly—that power proves itself through control: who decides, who enforces, who wins. I once relied on versions of that logic myself, believing that authority and clarity required force, certainty, or command. Every time I stepped into a boardroom, spoke publicly, or sought a salary increase, this logic pulled me away from the truer core my spirit guides had modeled for me.
Life has shown me another expression of power—one that sustains. It shows up as presence, restraint, accountability, and care. It earns trust over time. Defensiveness and trust cannot coexist. Vulnerability is what travels, especially when we remember to take it out of our suitcases and wear it in authentic ways, even on rainy days.
In communities shaped by displacement and inequity, I have seen again and again that power organized around domination rarely protects. Power organized around relationship does—relationship with God, self, community, strangers, detractors, the “untouchable,” and supporters alike.
Inclusion does not require universality to be fair.
For a long time, I believed fairness meant sameness. If something applied to everyone equally, it must be just. That belief was tidy and incomplete. I carried it longer than I should have, and I don’t regret that. It is part of what has made me who I have become—and who I am still becoming.
Experience taught me that equal application can still produce unequal outcomes when people begin from unequal ground. Inclusion, as I have come to understand it, responds honestly to reality. Living life on life’s terms is a practiced skill, and I manage it best when I don’t attempt to do it alone.
Inclusion asks a harder question: who has been excluded, and what needs to change so participation becomes real? That work requires specificity and context. Sometimes it requires asymmetry—not favoritism, but repair. Taking off the mask is sometimes hard, and always invaluable.
Truth does not require abstraction to be ethical. I have learned to be more cautious with language that floats above lived experience. I have used that language myself at times, mistaking neutrality for care and abstraction for fairness. Over time, I came to see how abstraction can protect power by avoiding accountability. Ethical truth-telling stays close to life. It names who is affected. It locates harm. It remembers history. It does not disappear bodies in the name of balance. It asks me to admit when I am wrong and to make amends as best I can, and as immediately as I can.
Specificity is honest.
Decentering does not require loss to be meaningful.
One of the deepest fears I encounter—both in others and at times within myself—is the belief that if some voices are centered, others must disappear. That fear is understandable. It comes from a history where power shifted through punishment, erasure, and harm.
My own childhood experiences were not devoid of these historical points of reference. I don’t know anyone whose childhood was untouched by something that needed attention in adulthood.
Decentering changes what organizes the system. It expands whose experiences shape reality. Nothing is confiscated. Something else becomes possible. Doors open when we hold ourselves in healthy, authentic ways—making ourselves visible at the right times and in the right ways.
This is the ethic that shapes We Were Seeds. The book does not argue these beliefs; it demonstrates them through story, structure, and restraint.
I know this ethic will attract challenge. It has challenged me as well. It dismantles inherited assumptions without attacking the people who hold them. Discomfort may arise. That discomfort often signals a different way of relating coming into view.
At Gemstones in the Sun, this is the work I am committed to: accompanying people of color in psycho-spiritual healing shaped by historical and ongoing displacement and inequity, and supporting the collective re-imagining of just economies across cultures and lands. Relation remains the practice— continuously striving to stay aligned.
I was formed in traditions that taught me to speak about love, justice, and responsibility with conviction. I learned how to lead, how to “do” ministry, how to organize, how to hope on behalf of others. I also learned—often through failure—that the frameworks I inherited for power, truth, inclusion, and resources did not always serve the very lives I claimed to serve. At times, they did not serve me either.
I have had to reckon with my own shortcomings along these lines, and I have sought to correct them where I could. What shifted over time were not my values, but the assumptions beneath them.
Life has a way of revealing the limits of belief systems—in the world around us and within us. The collisions I’ve encountered have occurred both beyond the confines of my mind and squarely within it. Some of the systems that once guided me were familiar, efficient, even well-intentioned. Over time, I came to see that they no longer served life, or my own capacity to remain aligned with my best intentions.
As I pivoted my focus away from limitation and toward more conscious, relational ways of being, clarity began to emerge. What follows are four beliefs I now hold as lived conclusions shaped by experience, reflection, accountability, and repair.
Power does not need domination to be real.
I was taught—explicitly and implicitly—that power proves itself through control: who decides, who enforces, who wins. I once relied on versions of that logic myself, believing that authority and clarity required force, certainty, or command. Every time I stepped into a boardroom, spoke publicly, or sought a salary increase, this logic pulled me away from the truer core my spirit guides had modeled for me.
Life has shown me another expression of power—one that sustains. It shows up as presence, restraint, accountability, and care. It earns trust over time. Defensiveness and trust cannot coexist. Vulnerability is what travels, especially when we remember to take it out of our suitcases and wear it in authentic ways, even on rainy days.
In communities shaped by displacement and inequity, I have seen again and again that power organized around domination rarely protects. Power organized around relationship does—relationship with God, self, community, strangers, detractors, the “untouchable,” and supporters alike.
Inclusion does not require universality to be fair.
For a long time, I believed fairness meant sameness. If something applied to everyone equally, it must be just. That belief was tidy and incomplete. I carried it longer than I should have, and I don’t regret that. It is part of what has made me who I have become—and who I am still becoming.
Experience taught me that equal application can still produce unequal outcomes when people begin from unequal ground. Inclusion, as I have come to understand it, responds honestly to reality. Living life on life’s terms is a practiced skill, and I manage it best when I don’t attempt to do it alone.
Inclusion asks a harder question: who has been excluded, and what needs to change so participation becomes real? That work requires specificity and context. Sometimes it requires asymmetry—not favoritism, but repair. Taking off the mask is sometimes hard, and always invaluable.
Truth does not require abstraction to be ethical. I have learned to be more cautious with language that floats above lived experience. I have used that language myself at times, mistaking neutrality for care and abstraction for fairness. Over time, I came to see how abstraction can protect power by avoiding accountability. Ethical truth-telling stays close to life. It names who is affected. It locates harm. It remembers history. It does not disappear bodies in the name of balance. It asks me to admit when I am wrong and to make amends as best I can, and as immediately as I can.
Specificity is honest.
Decentering does not require loss to be meaningful.
One of the deepest fears I encounter—both in others and at times within myself—is the belief that if some voices are centered, others must disappear. That fear is understandable. It comes from a history where power shifted through punishment, erasure, and harm.
My own childhood experiences were not devoid of these historical points of reference. I don’t know anyone whose childhood was untouched by something that needed attention in adulthood.
Decentering changes what organizes the system. It expands whose experiences shape reality. Nothing is confiscated. Something else becomes possible. Doors open when we hold ourselves in healthy, authentic ways—making ourselves visible at the right times and in the right ways.
This is the ethic that shapes We Were Seeds. The book does not argue these beliefs; it demonstrates them through story, structure, and restraint.
I know this ethic will attract challenge. It has challenged me as well. It dismantles inherited assumptions without attacking the people who hold them. Discomfort may arise. That discomfort often signals a different way of relating coming into view.
At Gemstones in the Sun, this is the work I am committed to: accompanying people of color in psycho-spiritual healing shaped by historical and ongoing displacement and inequity, and supporting the collective re-imagining of just economies across cultures and lands. Relation remains the practice— continuously striving to stay aligned.