A fellow member of an anti-racist working group recently referred me to this inspiring piece of adrienne maree brown’s writing on fractals. So many ideas here inspire me: that “small is all,” that transforming ourselves is the way to transform the world, that making a number of slight shifts in your own family, workplace, and community can reverberate as patterns replicate. Brown puts it much better:
How we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale. The patterns of the universe repeat at scale. There is a structural echo that suggests two things: one, that there are shapes and patterns fundamental to our universe, and two, that what we practice at a small scale can reverberate to the largest scale.
Natural-world metaphors really work on me! It gives me hope, amidst so much injustice in the world, that the little things many of us are trying to do towards social and racial justice might ultimately lead to the deeper, transformative change we crave.
On that note, I’ll share two little cell-like contributions to that bigger vision of change: templates for short and long talking circles to hold after viewing CIRCLE UP. These are included in the facilitator guide Carolyn Boyes-Watson and I put together for the film. I hope this offering might be useful in some way to whoever is reading this – please let me know if it is (and I’d be happy to mail you a copy of the guide if you like to hold physical objects in your hands)!
