A Twenty-First Century Ritual Celebration of Our Diverse and Honored Kinfolx

Today, let's acknowledge that International Women's Day celebrates a great diversity of bodies, genders, sexes, and sexualities. In this time when transwomen, cis-gendered women, gender expansive folx and intersex, LGBT+++ and queer communities are all threatened with erasure and violence, let's come together to celebrate the concept of gender equality, self-love, liberation, and joy. Let's stop the wars that are dividing us; let's come together and honor our bodies - simultaneously recognizing that our psyches and identities are never exclusively defined by our bodies and body parts. And, let's remember our s/heroes and gender-expansive kin who paid the way forward for us, naming, claiming, and opening the roads. Bring a candle - or the light in your heart - and be prepared to share a story of someone who inspires you this International Women's Day.

Arisika Razak, MPH, Professor Emerita, and former chair of the Women's Spirituality Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, is currently a core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland California. For over twenty years she provided midwifery care to indigent and immigrant women of color in the San Francisco Bay Area, serving as a home and hospital birth attendant, healthcare administrator, and patient advocate. Her current research interests include Africana wisdom traditions, Buddhism and womanism, and embodied spirituality and movement. A graduate of Spirit Rock's Dedicated Practitioner Program and the Sounds True Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach, Arisika leads community based sanghas in the Western Insight convert-based meditation tradition and is a regular contributor to Buddhist books and periodicals. Her teachings incorporate diverse spiritual traditions, multicultural feminisms, queer theory, and contemporary diversity theory. She has led spiritual and healing workshops and ritual celebrations for over four decades, and regularly presents at online and in-person conferences on women. Her film credits include:  Alice Walker Beauty in Truth;  Fire Eyes by Soraya Mire, the first full length feature film by an African woman to explore the issue of female genital cutting; and  Who Lives Who Dies a PBS special on health care services to marginalized and underserved populations.