Let Freedom Ring

Dear Reader,

Peace is the understanding that though we are each one different, we are all made of the same exquisite stuff. My kids taught me this. OzShalom 1:54

I’m listening to higher love. Today is Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday. This day always resonates with me, so I’m celebrating it privately. By singing and dancing and writing. Privately.

I am thinking about housework and the people who do this kind of work. I was recently hired as a homemaker to help out someone who needs homemaking in my own family. And then I was very quickly let go, which is a longer story. It’s disappointing that I am not allowed to be the one who is employed as the homemaker, but I’m letting that go today. That’s not the point. That’s not what I’m thinking about. What I’m thinking about is equality and freedom and justice. Can I get an amen? 🙂

I have been happily homemaking for my family since I started a family in 2002. I am 100% happy to make a nice home for my family. I have never ever said or thought otherwise. Of that, I am certain. All I want is a happy home life. What I am not happy about is how little my personal value is is to our larger society. What I am not happy about is how my role as a homemaker is so belittled and demeaned as a non-job. It’s incredible how little progress has been made in my lifetime. For domestic workers. For women. For mothers. For wives. For me. ✌🏼

When my children were very young, I lived in luxurious homes. First in a beautiful brownstone in Brooklyn, New York and then in a historic turn of the century summer mansion in South Orange, New Jersey, and then eventually in Lone Tree, Colorado. My ex-husband and I hired seven domestic workers who were immigrants from Mexico, Tibet, and countries in South America + one young American from Long Island. 🙂 Their names were Mary, Dora, Laura, Iliana, Patricia, and Claudia. These women were all well educated and as brilliant and talented as I am (if not more so). They cleaned my house and cared for my children and they became my teachers and my friends. All of them.

I recall one day when I had hired a new domestic worker in New Jersey and I didn’t actually have any plans to do anything while they were working. This woman urged me to leave the house so that I could have some time away for myself. She seemed genuinely concerned for my well-being, at a time when no one else in my life really seemed to be. I left and went grocery shopping just to kill the time that day. I really had nothing that I wanted to do with my spare time. I was so used to taking care of my children and my home and having no independent life. The next time she came over I made a plan for myself. I had decided that I was going to read a book someplace outside of the house. It was what I wanted to do most, but I was too embarrassed to tell her what I had done when I came home, so I just made up some little white lie about shopping so that she wouldn’t ask me what I was doing. I spent 2 or 3 hours that day reading a novel from cover to cover. It was heaven. I felt guilty. ✌🏼

I can’t help but think about how common my experience really is. How underpaid and overworked those women were. How underpaid and overworked I have been. How I am okay despite my circumstances because I started out this family path as a very wealthy housewife; and how lucky I am to have started out from that fortunate position. Thank God.

That’s all. I’m going to go take a walk with my husband and our dogs now.

I’ll end with these lyrics that James Taylor wrote because I went to sleep with them playing in my head and I woke up with them playing in my head. I love this song. I hope the words will touch your heart and raise your vibration the way that they raise mine. I like to sing it to myself.

Oh, let us turn our thoughts today
To Martin Luther King
And recognize that there are ties between us
All men and women living on the Earth
Ties of hope and love
Sister and brotherhood

That we are bound together
In our desire to see the world
Become a place in which our children
Can grow free and strong

We are bound together by the task
That stands before us
And the road that lies ahead
We are bound, and we are bound

There is a feeling like the clenching of a fist
There is a hunger in the center of the chest
There is a passage through the darkness and the mist
And though the body sleeps
The heart will never rest

Shed a little light, oh Lord (shed a little light, oh Lord)
So that we can see, oh yeah
Just a little light, oh Lord. (just a little light, oh Lord)
Want to stand it on up
Stand it on up, oh Lord (stand it on up, Lord)
Want to walk it on down
Gonna shed a little light, oh Lord (shed a little light, oh Lord)

Can’t get no light from a dollar bill
(Don’t see me no light from a dollar bill)
Don’t give me no light from a TV screen, oh no, no
When I open my eyes, I want to drink my fill
From the well on the hill
I know you know what I mean

Shed a little light, oh Lord (shed a little light, oh Lord)
So that we can see, oh yeah
Just a little light, oh Lord (just a little light, oh Lord)
Want to stand it on up
Stand it on up, oh Lord (stand it on up, oh Lord)
Stand on up, Lord
Want to walk it on down
Gonna shed a little light, oh Lord (shed a little light, oh Lord)
Shed a little light, Lord

There’s a feeling like the clenching of a fist
There is a hunger in the center of the chest, oh yes
There is a passage through the darkness and the mist
And though the body sleeps
The heart will never rest

Oh, Let us turn our thoughts today
To Martin Luther King
And recognize that there are ties between us
All men and women living on the Earth
Ties of hope and love
Sister and brotherhood

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: James Taylor

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” said Martin Luther King, Jr.

1m3s = peace ✌🏼 in cued speech.

6s5t5s = light 💡

1m3s + 6s5t5s

💚

Lisa