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 got a lot to get into. And we have a ritual on this show because, frankly, doing the work of conversing in Black Talklandia is kind of difficult, right? Like learning how to be a better person. It requires a little bit of discomfort, right? Because that's what growth is. The growth is in the discomfort. And that can be challenging. And it can be, frankly, a little bit heavy. And so we have a ritual on this show that makes sure that before

we do any of that work we are intentionally tapping in to a sense of joy gratitude and appreciation

and those emotions are particularly important because when we are tapped into joy gratitude and

appreciation we recognize that we cannot be trapped by loneliness, fear, and depression, which can be very

debilitating emotions if we're trapped in them. And so we have a ritual, as I mentioned, it's called

a moment of gratitude. Yeah, the rituals, it's pretty simple. It's so simple. In fact, it goes a little

something like the in just a minute. Y'all are going to hear music. That music is going to be sung to you by the beautiful voices of a group called the beautiful chorus and as you will hear in the lyrics that they sing you are going to upon hearing said music be invited to join the rest of us because when we hear it we are going to collectively begin taking the slowest deepest most lung capacity expanding, joyful heart invigorating, troubled mind cleansing,

and weary soul 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. Food. Everyday folks, 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 Instagram community, just grateful and

appreciative for all of you, the actual focus for today's moment of gratitude, which is returning

to these concepts of community care. And we had been talking this month about, and last month,

about the distinctions between self-care versus care for community. We have recognized that

is really difficult to be a part of a vibrant, healthy community.

Or if you, well, no, that wasn't how I wanted to say it.

It's really difficult to have a vibrant, healthy community if your soul focuses on self-care.

And so we are stretching ourselves a little bit because we want to not just ensure that we good as individuals,

but we are now embracing the notion that there's a limit to how good

we can be as individuals if we are within communities that are struggling, that do not have a level

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