Chris Williams

AUGUST’S THEME IS PRIDE.

Pride is a celebration of our truest, radiant selves and a defiance against those who expect us to dim our own light. We live in a world that often encourages us to take up less space, to conceal the parts of ourselves that can’t be easily commodified or consumed. Or worse, what we reveal exposes us to oppressive actors and systems who steal away our dignity. 

Pride is a powerful affirmation of authenticity. It gives us the grace to show up as ourselves and live in alignment with our values. It embraces every shade of our longings, our regrets, and our hopes — these beautiful and powerful things that make us who we are. 

Pride is when you stand tall and say, “This is who I am.” Pride is when you reclaim the parts of your identity that others might have scorned. Pride is when you raise your voice in defense of someone who is powerless, saying “Enough.” Because that someone might just be yourself. How will you unfurl yourself fully? How will you extend safety and solidarity so that we all may be unapologetically ourselves?

Our Palm Beach chapter chose this month’s exploration of Pride and Kayla Griffin illustrated the theme.   

JULY’S THEME IS TREASURE.

Treasure takes many forms, both physical and intangible. Yours may be a ring that has been passed down to you from your ancestors. A hidden spring of water in a parched land. The budding, implicit trust of a new friend. New photographs of the wider galaxy, full of iridescent swirls of matter and light. The ruins of a people from a faraway time and place. 

Our instinct is to clutch them tightly. We seal our treasures in glass cases, to preserve them from time’s decay, to display them as testaments to our worth. We fear their loss, yet in this fear, we lose our ability to cherish them. We must soften our grip and magnify our time spent in their presence, precisely because nothing will stay with us. Eventually, even crown jewels will pass into dust. 

What happens when we expand what we treasure beyond the rare, the beautiful, and the precious to the ordinary and the unnoticed? Even graffitied poetry on the side of a bus stop is a relic of someone who had passed through there, leaving traces for future archaeologists to excavate. What treasures can only you discern?
Our Brisbane chapter chose this month’s exploration of Treasure, Spectator Jonze illustrated the theme, and Mailchimp is presenting the theme.

JUNE’S THEME IS REVERIE.

When your gaze softens around the edges, where does your mind travel? What thoughts arise unbidden? Reverie beckons us to dream while awake, spinning loose associations that seem to emerge from somewhere not entirely inside or outside of you. Our woolgathering summons past memories and nascent fantasies. We turn them over and over, like smooth stones in our hand, making meaning.

Neuroscientists have found that daydreaming ignites your brain’s default mode network. Counterintuitively, this unfocused part of the mind is where many creative breakthroughs take place — think Archimedes‘ fluid mechanics in a bathtub and Newton’s gravity under the apple tree. When you’re not preoccupied with solving a problem and chaining yourself to your desk in a fit of productivity, your mind is free to drift, roaming for the pieces that might complete the puzzle unexpectedly.

Pay attention to what lulls you into reverie. What conditions disarm your focus? Let your thoughts float and not settle on anything, but drift like a cloud, or a child skipping across a sidewalk on a hot summer day.

Our Omaha chapter chose this month’s exploration of Reverie and Eduardo Gardea illustrated the theme.

MAY’S THEME IS ACCEPTANCE.

Acceptance is the act of surrendering to our reality, without judgment or fear. There are many things in our lives that cause us discomfort or pain. We attempt to change or resist them, to no effect. So we wave a big stick, keeping them at bay like a wounded animal. 

Acceptance is weaving into your story what once caused you pain — and still might, to this day. You welcome that creature into your home, tend to its wounds, and feed it out of your hand. Acceptance is knowing that this feral animal lives side by side with your tender house cat of a heart, always.

Embracing what cannot change can help you gather the energy to change what must. Accept these truths: you cannot make another person love or see you. You did not finish everything before the sun set on another day — and you didn’t need to. Every moment will pass, the blissful and the excruciating. It’s the hardest lesson, but one we need the most: the grace to let go. 
Our Lexington chapter chose this month’s exploration of Acceptance and Robert Beatty illustrated the theme.

APRIL’S THEME IS MOVEMENT.

The body in motion is a thing of beauty. Our cells shake kinetic energy through the finely articulated instruments of muscle, ligament, and bone. We blink, we pulse, we dance. Some even pull off feats of human athleticism and daring, from which we can hardly look away.

Movement is a universal state of being. Even at rest, the matter we’re composed of is in motion — subatomic particles whir about at dizzying speeds, to create the sense of solidity. The things that appear still — the earth beneath us, the trunk of a tree above us, is but a trick of the eye. They move slowly but at a staggering scale.

When we move together, we can build social and collective movements. Like a murmuration of swallows, we can form sweeping visions of a world never seen before. Our collective energy directed like a mighty river flowing downstream, taking unexpected and winding turns to carve mountains.
Our Wellington chapter chose this month’s exploration of Movement, Hannah Webster illustrated the theme, and Mailchimp is presenting the theme.

MARCH’S THEME IS CORRUPTION.

Corruption can start innocently, like favoring someone you know over someone you don’t. Or recalling a gift they once sent, and repay them with a project for that sweetness. Corruption is a spectrum, rewarding social connections and financial advantages over the rules of fair play. It exists in every society and every institution.

Some people survive through corruption, the labyrinthine bureaucracies where they live making it literally impossible otherwise. But while they survive, others perish. Rising plumes of toxic chemicals, collapsing buildings not constructed to code, we owe the calamities all around us to those who cared more about profit than people and gain over the greater good.

As social anthropologist Lucy Koechlin notes, “A world without corruption is a powerful idea. But it doesn’t appear out of the blue.” It takes courage to speak out. To demand transparency and accountability. To strengthen whistleblower protections and the rule of law. To break up corporate concentration while organizing coalitions of people to reset the balance. What will you do to hold power to account?

Our Monterrey chapter chose this month’s exploration of Corruption and Violeta Hernández illustrated the theme.

FEBRUARY’S THEME IS TOUCH.

Across the years when we had to stay apart to keep one another safe, skin hungered for the sensation of being pressed against another. The longing for touch was deeply felt. 

Unlike sight or sound, the senses we primarily rely on for information, touch cannot be conveyed across distance through screens and speakers. Touch invites us to slow down, pay attention, and come closer. 

When we open ourselves to the ineffable — what cannot be transmitted through words — touch emerges as a language unto itself. The grit of the soil under our bare feet, the clay slip enrobing a potter’s wheel, the sun-warmed fur of a beloved pet — these sensations can be healing.

How will you stay in contact with the electric matter that keeps us alive? What will pass through your hands today?
Our Lisbon chapter chose this month’s exploration of Touch and Emma Lopes illustrated the theme.

JANUARY’S THEME IS SANCTUARY.

You can stop running now, you are safe here. A sanctuary offers protection to those who are vulnerable: those who are fleeing violence, those who have been cast off and told there is no place for them there, even animals whose habitats have disappeared. Here is a place where you can finally lay your head down and rest.

The original meaning of sanctuary was a sacred place, containing a holy relic or person. A sanctuary recognizes that each of us, no matter where we have came from or what we’ve done, and our needs — for a full belly, for a roof, for safety, to be free from worry — are inviolable and whole.

Where is it that you find refuge? What happens to your body when you cross its threshold? And most importantly, how can you hold the door open for others?

Our Sheffield chapter chose this month’s exploration of Sanctuary, Lisa Maltby illustrated the theme, and Mailchimp is presenting the theme.

DECEMBER’S THEME IS ABUNDANCE.

Abundance is a state of plenty. In an intensely competitive society, we often feel like we have the opposite. Capitalism breeds a mentality of scarcity — it’s hard to feel like we have enough when we’re constantly trying to accumulate more. 

Gratitude magnifies our experience of abundance. When we marvel at the taste of ripe summer fruit, juice bursting from its skin. When we set a table, a seat for every person we cherish, and bathe in the radiance. 

Generosity multiplies abundance. When we prioritize mutual flourishing over private stockpiling, plant ecologist Robin Wall Kimmerer posits, “the practice for dealing with abundance is to give it away.” Once you stop hoarding what you fear to lose, you find that the more you share, the richer — in community, in wellbeing — you become. 

What would it take for us to feel like we have enough? What does it take for us to unclench our fists and share our overflowing bounty?
Our Santa Fe chapter chose this month’s exploration of Abundance, Neebinnaukzhik Southall illustrated the theme, and Mailchimp is presenting the theme.

OCTOBER’S THEME IS ETHOS.

Ethos is that specific quality that defines a place, time, or group of people. When you step into a room, a busy downtown, or a community gathering, you intuit its spirit. A messy DIY space invites experimentation and mistakes, a lush city park promises tranquility to anyone who seeks it. Maybe you even know of a monthly event where everyone is welcome and everything is free of charge. 

At its core is a paradox: despite the specificity of an ethos, it’s impossible to pinpoint or trace to a specific origin. What honed that distinctive sensibility is long gone, vanished into myth. 

With our actions and words, we embody these values and beliefs beyond conscious knowing. In turn, we subtly shape the ethos that our descendants — of family, of place — will receive from us. Ethos is alchemic, ineffable, and infinitely ponderable across place and culture. What ways of moving through the world did you inherit?

Our Asheville chapter chose this month’s exploration of Ethos and Colin Sutherland illustrated the theme.