Joyce’s persimmons
I don’t know if my friend Joyce has a persimmon tree in her back yard or a friendly green grocer that sells the delicious things, but I know this — Joyce has brought me more persimmons than I have ever eaten from all other sources combined in my entire life. And she brings the good kind, the ones that don’t turn your mouth into a mouthful of fiberglass insulation.
If you’ve eaten a few persimmons, you probably know what I mean.
You see, on the south side of Chicago, I never even heard the word “persimmon,” as far as I can recall. It could be a frou-frou thing spoken by north siders perhaps. But where I come from there are a dozen kinds of apples, a dozen kind of gangs, a dozen kinds of trouble, and truthfully even knowing what a persimmon is feels like quite an extraneous thing. They just don't exist there.
But I don’t live there anymore.
Every so often, I get up early and I drive myself to near where Joyce and her pals live and we have a community organizing meeting that is more high energy and edifying than pretty much any community organizing meeting I’ve ever encountered. Often community organizing meetings are high energy and VERY negative, or such meetings are somewhat edifying and relatively calm, but seldom do people understand the value of being able to be both high energy and edifying.
In contrast, I love our meetings. I love getting together with warriors in that community and other communities all up and down the coast. It eats up a good part of my time, but it is so worth it.
And it softens my heart something special when Joyce shows up with a persimmon or two and extends them to me as I’m about to wrap up with the group and hurry off to my next meeting.
You see, as wonderful as they are, it’s not the persimmon.
It’s not even Joyce.
There’s just something about saying thank you to another person.
Today, for example, is one of those special days when people say thank you to their mothers. Thank you mothers!
And I want you to know, dear reader, how thankful I am for your support of my work. I am going to continue aiming to give you the very best I have and to fight this fight as boldly as I can. Each time inspiration hits me, I intend to drop what I’m doing in order to jot down that idea. Before I send any email or post any writing, I intend to say to myself “Is this really worth interrupting someone’s day over?” and the answer to that question will determine whether or not I press send, because I want to give you my best.
Persimmon or not, I am going to give everything I have every day, empty myself out, knowing that the very next morning I will get down on my knees to pray and rise up from that ritual even more full of blessings to share with others. Not sure how that works, but it works.
Every day I’m refilled and ready for more.
I don’t want your money. I want your buy-in, and even if I don’t get that, you’ll still get me here in these pages — hopefully every day, sharing the most heartfelt that I have for you.
If you don’t like that, I invite you to unsubscribe and to find what you need in a different place. You see, I want you to be able to find all you need. And I will have no hard feelings about you doing so. Life is too short for you to have anything less than what you need in order to give every day your best. That is made even more clear by the gravity of the era in which we live.
And if you do like that plan, and this offer is the right one, I would like you to join me on what will be a most amazing adventure as a founding member of Project Accountability.
And truthfully, if it isn’t the right time, don’t trouble yourself over it. I will be here giving the best I can, in all the ways I am called to and I ask you to do the same. If this is not something you are called to, don’t push yourself into it.
As for the rest of you, the link is below. You know what to do.
Tap here to join Project Accountability as a Founding Member
Allan Stevo