Dr. Lauretta Halstead, The Author

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Loooooooong time coming!!

Witnessing on this date!

Congratulations to for her official confirmation as the first African-American woman and public defender to the US Supreme Court Justice. What a grand and glorious moment!

Jackson attended Harvard University for college and law school, where she served as an editor on the Harvard Law Review. She began her legal career with three clerkships, including one with U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer. Prior to her elevation to an appellate court and from 2013 to 2021, she served as a district judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Jackson was also vice chair of the United States Sentencing Commission from 2010 to 2014. Since 2016, she has been a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers.

Witnessing on this date!

Congratulations to for her official confirmation as the first African-American woman and public defender to the US Supreme Court Justice. What a grand and glorious moment!

Jackson attended Harvard University for college and law school, where she served as an editor on the Harvard Law Review. She began her legal career with three clerkships, including one with U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer. Prior to her elevation to an appellate court and from 2013 to 2021, she served as a district judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Jackson was also vice chair of the United States Sentencing Commission from 2010 to 2014. Since 2016, she has been a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers.

I don’t post much but sometimes I feel compelled to do so.

We all know, “reproductive rights” as an idea is being discussed nationally as we speak.
Can ‘we’, (if there is such a notion), commit to using language that bespeaks the reality…spiritual/psychological/ historical, etc. ways in which we “discuss” our world?
For example, that which we describe as “Pro Life” is essentially’pro-pregnancy or pro-gestation’. Life is sacred for 40 weeks or nine months, but after that, not so much.

I am not discussing anything regarding/judging the positions around abortion.
My question remains: can we be honest with our language, terminology and THEN positions? For those HONESTLY up for collective, courageous conversation (public or private)I am here. (Secular or religious or spiritual, let’s do this!) IF and ONLY if we do it for love/people/good/help/elevation/etc.).

Happy Kwanzaa!

Sweet Honey In The Rock - Seven Principles Seven Days of Kwanzaa: 1.Umoja (Unity) 2.Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): 3.Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility): 4.Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics): 5...

“Please deliver us from our addiction to shiny things and contextually empty symbols.” ~dr. Lauretta halstead~

About Activate Innerstanding
Activate Innerstanding is a community which holds sacred space for all who know or desire to know the liberating truth which lives within each of us. This community serves as a reminder that your soul came here "knowing" all that she needed to know, but through the noise of this life, has forgotten many universal truths.
Contemplatives, thinkers, seekers, believers and doubters, welcome to Activate Innerstanding...'the other Ai'.
Think with me!
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Activate Innerstanding is creating Awareness of personal power through contemplative conversation. | Patreon Become a patron of Activate Innerstanding today: Get access to exclusive content and experiences on the world’s largest membership platform for artists and creators.

“Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.”
~Pablo Picasso

“Searching for external saviors ensures Internal bondage.”
~dr. lauretta halstead~

Those who desire ‘understanding’ must have the courage to ask the questions which lead to ‘innerstanding.’

“Activate Innerstanding” is for all who dare to “...think a thought all the way through.”(Weems)
Critical thinkers, seekers, believers and doubters are fully welcomed into this space. Come! Think with me...
Patreon.com/ActivateInnerstanding

Activate Innerstanding is creating Awareness of personal power through contemplative conversation. | Patreon Become a patron of Activate Innerstanding today: Get access to exclusive content and experiences on the world’s largest membership platform for artists and creators.

"What Now My Love?"

It's funny how songs stay in us, even though we have not heard them for many years. "What Now My Love?'...came to me as I was asking the larger existential question: "What's Going On?" I thank Frank Sinatra and Marvin Gaye for music to accompany my soul's inquiry.
The questions are here, in the midst of a virus outside of us that we do not want to get in, called COVID 19, and a cancer in side of us that we must fight to get out of us...called racism. The illness of US is not new, but is in many ways, on display. My earlier cry, 'what's going on? has morphed into 'what now my love?'
I asked my Creator, my God...what now? It became clear to me; now, I AM coming for the statues, the monuments...all that has been erected to something other than the Love of I AM. What has been erected to memorialize the dead things? The dead worshiping the dead, instead of burying the dead! What have you erected in the place of 'doing justice and loving mercy and walking humbly with your God?' I AM, is coming for the MONUMENTS, wherever they may be...hearts, minds,schools, Houses of Worship, governments, ideas, ideals and concepts. How many of us have become curators for museums in our faith walk?
What now my love?

Dr. Lauretta Halstead

Souls Molested

I am a molested woman. I have been blessed with a great father and a protective brother. I have been blessed along the way with unbelievable friendships with men of differing stripes. I am blessed with a gem of a husband who delights in supporting all of my endeavors. I am blessed with sons who have served me as students, teachers, protectors and cheerleaders.
This amazing God in me and the system around me has managed to keep me from the horrific trauma of ever being sexually abused, traumatized or molested in my physical body....but my soul.My soul is molested. My soul is traumatized along with the collective Souls of Black Folks.
Watching the cavalier, nonchalant and disconnected ways in which my people are slaughtered---sacrificed---murdered; in plain view, in slow motion and on repeat is an assault on our collective soul.
My cup of disgust and defilement was full, so I tried not to look, but it's hard to avoid the eyes of pain, suffering and death that were staring at me. Our eyes inevitably met. It molested my soul. Gunshots, dirty water, dead schools, dead foods, murderous kneeling, choke holds, dehumanization----suffocation. It molests my soul.
Another one. The names get jumbled and scrambled by the ways in which that which was 'shocking' has transformed into 'normal'----like eating beans and flatulence. Mychal McGee, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Botham Jean, Joshua Brown, Eric Gardener, Philando Castile. Murder is just something we do.
My soul is molested. When will we realize that you cannot murder someone without dying yourself?
The pandemic shouts: "We are all connected!" We respond: "We are us and them!"
As promised, if we are silent "...the very rocks will cry out!" I submit COVID-19 in many ways is, "...the rocks crying out." We are in the middle of a ROCK CONCERT!
The Universal God is not pleased with the molestation of the soul. The restoration of the soul comes through cleaving to The One until we become One. This is OUR job. We must decide to do it. There is no calvary coming for this. We are the saviors in this story. If there is healing, we must make the decision to regenerate. Not reconciliation this time, but eradication for the purpose of regeneration----we must grow a new arm and a new heart (think starfish), instead of putting more of our broken pieces into a dirty cast and a raggedy sling. My soul is molested. Your thoughts?

If anything I write resonates with you, please like and share with those whom you care about! Many thanks!!
LHH

Contemplative Conversations:
Charles Dickens penned a wonderful Blues line when he wrote: "It was the best of times and the worst of times..."
It's so beautiful, Billie Holiday could have sang it to us as jazz or blues and our souls would have caught it; Rachelle Ferrell could riff it for us today and reconnect some of our collective disconnects.
The horrible is in fact horrible, and we can all get dosed and overdosed on it via the media. But the best of times....perhaps we can speak about. In this time of refrain and reset, it might be helpful to think about purification. It seems counter-intuitive to speak about purity in the midst of pervasive contamination, but maybe this is in fact the ideal time to speak about it. Our "cultural norms" are on lock-down.
Notably, our religious institutions are closed simultaneously. What is more interesting to me is the timing of it all, with April being the month for Pesach/Passover, Resurrection Sunday/Easter and Ramadan...but our 'mountains where we go to worship' are closed! As The Apostle Paul might ask in this moment: "What shall we say then?"
I invite you to think with me for a moment. To each stripe of the Abrahamic faiths I ask:
1. What does it mean in this hour to fulfill your religious obligation to 'fear God and keep God's commandments, for this is the whole duty of the human being' as prescribed by your sacred text? (Ecclesiastes)
2. What does it mean for 'true worshipers to worship God in spirit and in truth... loving God above all and with everything in you,while loving your neighbor as yourself' as prescribed by your sacred text? (Matthew;John)
3. What does it mean to the 'surrendered ones' to be 'fully submitted to God'... as prescribed by your sacred text? (Surah 3)
As our busy-ness has been demanded to pause, this is perhaps the best of times and seasons to contemplte these things. Don't be shy...your thoughts?

Contemplative Conversations:

"Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it Holy." This was the first commandment I ever memorized as a little girl in Sunday school. Although I had no real clue as to it's meaning, I was drawn to it then, as I am now.
In the midst of the 'Corona Chaos,' perhaps we are being called to collectively contemplate the meaning of it yet again. What might it mean...school is closed; busy people have to stay home; churches, synagogues and mosques closed at the same time for the same reason; people who 'don't have time' having 'nothing but time?'
As the Sages of old fleshed out commentaries regarding what it meant to welcome Shabbat/Sabbath, interestingly the heart of 'remembering' was centered in the home. The time of the Sabbath was and is, to be entered INTO as both time and space of/for worship. Refraining from some things was indulgence in the Holy. The destruction of the Temple added spiritual dimension to the practice of Judaism. Perhaps while we are 'locked down,' the practice of our faith will ascend into the ether.
Like the Earth, we too must purge ourselves of the toxicity which the disintegration of boundaries brings. Let apathy decrease and empathy increase. Your thoughts?

When The Temple was destroyed the Israelites were forced to define and redefine what it meant to worship. What? No turtle dove sacrificing in the outer courts? No incense? No washing? No ‘going TO Jerusalem to worship?’
I like many of you in this moment, can feel our collective existential angst...what is this? what is God saying?...or like Marvin Gaye: “What’s Going On?”
Could it be, as it always is (ask my sons), a teachable moment? Surely, there are many lessons to learn right now, but think with me...
Could this be a moment for us to understand more clearly what it means to recognize that my body AND yours IS the temple?...and that it’s holy?...and filled with Spirit?
How then should we treat ourselves and others? This has to be a moment of “we” and not ‘us and them.’
We Are One!! Yes?

If my words resonate or add value in any way please like and share🎶

THE LOOK OF LOVE:
When I first learned the word corona, it was in conjunction with my fascination with a solar eclipse. It's described as an 'envelope around the sun'...the star that we are closest to here on earth. It's usually invisible to us except during eclipses.
Now, this virus...in its 19th mutation (that we know of) seems to be enveloping the Earth. We are having a worldwide 'social eclipse'...affecting us all in ways that we do not even know how to think about.
As anxiety producing as it might feel, this is the time to remember that there is an eye...a calm place, a safe place, a still place available to us. The power of COVID-19 is its INVISIBILITY. The power of 'us' is our VISIBILITY. Somehow in times of crises we slow down a little bit and begin to 'see' one another again. We see our connectivity as human beings and remember that human experience is not foreign to human beings!...of any stripe.
This feeling of 'beating the air' as the Apostle Paul put it can wear us out if we forget how powerful we are when we realize that we are more alike than we are different. We all want the same things on the most fundamental levels of our existence.
This connects us even though in many ways we are 'resistant' to that reality.
As things slow down for a while, look into the eyes of those with whom you share space (at 6-10 feet apart of course), I challenge you to find: The Look of Love!

Thank you to all who like and follow me. STAY TUNED!!!

“Who told us we needed permission to pray???”
Believers who pray never STOPPED praying in school...or home.

“Something can be wonderful, amazing, awesome, real and most beautiful while at the same time being totally irrational.”
For example: LOVE.
Question: Who told you love was easy??
Lesson: Love anyway!

Grief is a reality of the human experience. The prerequisite for grief is connection. Grief must be released because we are not built to hold it. There is no sack in the body or soul for grief because it is not meant to remain in us "fully concentrated." It will always hurt because you will always love the one you lost. Let love bind together the pieces of our broken hearts. The healing, like the grief, is in the love.

Lauretta Halstead is an educator, speaker, ordained minister and writer. She worked for over 14 years in healthcare as a professional Board-Certified Chaplain. She is the founder of Contemplative Conversations and looking forward to sharing and investing time and space with YOU!

Dr. Lauretta Halstead, The Author updated their website address.