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 a ritual on this show because typically we have a very heavy sense. As I described,

Black Talklandia, this is all shot, no chaser. And so it's a very heavy show typically, and we

have learned early on from the beginning of the show that we had to have something at the beginning

that would allow us to tap into a sense of joy, gratitude, and appreciation because the news of Black Talklandia is heavy.

And we know that when we are rooted in joy, gratitude, and appreciation, we cannot be trapped by

fear, loneliness, and depression.

And so every single day, before we get to the heaviness of the content, we spend just a few

minutes curating that sense of joy, gratitude, and appreciation, perhaps by listening

to a song or a quote or some sort of other point of inspiration. And today is much the same.

The ritual is called a moment of gratitude and it is super simple. So simple, in fact, it goes a little

something like this. In just a minute, you're going to hear some music.

And when you hear that music, it's going to be an invitation to you to join the rest of us

because we will collectively begin taking the slowest, the deepest, the most lung capacity

expanding, joyful heart, invigorate, and troubled mind cleansing, the most weary,

soul, uplifting, and amazingly juicy breath.

As we kick off our most important segment of every single day,

it is time for our moment of gratitude.

Music Every day, folks, we got to do it and every day, folks, we got to do it and every day it matters. Today I'm going to share with you this poem that was in this most amazing book.

It's called The People's Project.

It is a book of poems, essays, and art for looking forward.

That's literally what it's called.

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