Alka's Angle

March brings many changes with it! We entered the season of Lent -- with the Ash Wednesday service on March 2nd! We are using the theme “Good Enough” reminding ourselves to slow down this season of Lent and to pay attention and celebrate where we are in life, and not get caught up in the race to climb the ladder of success in a way that prevents us from being in the moment and celebrate the joys of ‘now.’ We are excited for the plans we have. Most of you should have received a Lenten kit delivered to you. If not, we will have some available on Sunday or you can let us know and we will deliver one. 

In this last week of the month, I learned about The Combahee River Collective Statement, a statement published in 1977, advocating that society should be reorganized based on the collective needs of those who it most oppresses.

The New York Times’s 1619 Project, in 2019, generated the need for the Black Americans to tell their own stories. Black stories are not only focused on the brutality and oppression they have endured but is also about their resilience and will for survival.

I confess that I don’t know a lot about the his(her)story of Black people in this country, so this year I am reading as many articles as I can, that tell these stories (not as in fiction, but as their life experience).

February is observed as Black History Month. Carter G. Woodson of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASALH), created Negro History Week in February 1926, and Congress passed “National Black History Month” into law in 1986, to encourage all people to understand the black experience and their struggle for freedom.