Welcome to another episode of Lurie Breaks It Down, a podcast where we dig deeply to connect the dots on the issues that shape our world.

I'm Lurie Daniel Favors, author, activist, attorney, and the host of the Lurie Daniel Favors show on Sirius XM's Urban View, Channel 126. If you like what you're about to hear, go ahead and give us five stars and then tell everybody that you know. And if you don't like it, just, child, keep it to yourself and pray our strength. Okay? Thank you so much. Also, don't forget to check out my YouTube page, Lurie Daniel Favor's Media, where you should subscribe, like, and share because then you'll get notified when I post videos from my show, which I do just about every single day and when I go live with my YouTube audience. We have on this show, before we get to all the news that we're going to cover, and we are going to have a time today. Okay, and the phone lines, of course, I will open up. But we have a ritual on this show because typically doing the work of conversing in Black Talklandia is very difficult. And it's difficult because the stories are hard. Y'all, we haven't even talked. I'm going to update you all a bit on what's happening in Jamaica right now. We need a pan-African response to that situation because it is devastating. And often for us, most of the stories we talk about on this show are hard, right? And I am a person who grew up on talk radio, so I know that after a couple of weeks, your spirit just can't take it. So we never just

dive right into the news. We never just dive right into the stories. We start with a ritual that we

call the moment of gratitude. And this is a moment that allows us to intentionally curate a bit of

emotion that is rooted in joy, gratitude, and appreciation. This is really important because when you are rooted

in joy, gratitude, and appreciation, it don't matter what you're doing. You cannot be trapped by fear,

loneliness, and depression. And so it's extraordinarily important that we take a moment, whether

you're doing it here with us in our daily moments of gratitude, whether you have your own

wellness practices that you engage in when you wake up, whether you are an early morning wake up person or you work in the night shift and

so your schedule is a little off. Whenever you wake up to start, what is your day, be sure to

take some time. Tap into, cultivate and tap into wellness practices that are going to allow you to

really thrive because you deserve it. You really do. And we frankly need it. And so this ritual called a moment of gratitude is pretty simple. So simple. In fact, it goes a little something like this. In just a minute, you're going to hear music. The music is going to be sung to you by an amazing group called the Beautiful Chorus. And the Beautiful Chorus is going to sing a song that is going to be an invitation to you

to join the rest of us.

Because when we hear the song, we are going to collectively begin taking the slowest,

the deepest, the most lung capacity expanding, joyful heart invigorating, troubled mind

cleansing, and we are so uplifting the most amazingly juicy breath.

As we kick off our most important segment of every single

day. It is time for our moment of gratitude.

Thank you. Every day, folks, every day we got to do it.

And every day it matters.

Shout out to the team.

Shout out to the Urban View family, the Nubians, the podcast community, the YouTube community, the brother who passed me on the street this morning when me and Brian was walking

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