Why Us? Why Now? Why here?

Originally published in 2019, this reflection marks the beginning of our collective journey. We return to it now with gratitude for how far we’ve come—and for the healing still unfolding. In this piece, our founder, Rev. Diane Ford Dessables, opens the conversation that became Gemstones in the Sun. Her words invite us to pause, breathe, and remember that the path to freedom begins with truth and ends in community.

Greetings in the name and spirit of all that is good and filled with light.

After reading our blog guidelines, please consider offering your own story here. If you’d like to post, send us a note so we can be in conversation. You may trust that everything within my power will be done to create and maintain a thoughtful, respectful, and safe space for people of color to share what’s true.

The word selah appears throughout the Psalms. Its meaning is mysterious, but many take it as a sacred pause—to breathe and reflect on what matters. I look forward to hearing, receiving, and honoring your stories, in selah.

I am a recovering person—an initiate in a larger conversation that’s sweeping across the world. We are naming a kind of cultural amnesia that becomes chronic when we forget our ancestors’ teachings about creation, sustenance, and provision. In the United States, a fixation on money and productivity has tightened its grip—especially since 2019. The pandemic laid bare our interdependence; uprisings for racial justice made truth unavoidable; climate disruption keeps reminding us that the Earth is not a bank.

People of color are often told to drink from the poisoned well: to measure worth in dollars, to hide what is sacred, to trade belonging for approval. This space exists to gather and remember the ways we resist the status quo—so future generations can claim how we honor ourselves and one another in ways that are not for sale. Our cultures of origin teach us how to be sustained and how to sustain others—through elders and Spirit, through mutual care, through right relationship.

This is not about being against anyone. It is about becoming whole—without hiding, apologizing, defending, or asking permission.

Selah.
— Rev. Diane Ford Dessables