IN SHORT:
UPRIGHT: Compassion, care, the capacity for incredible powers of human connectivity. Emotionally attuned, intuitive, and in the flow.
REVERSED: Interiority, boundaries, self-care, self-love. Unresponsive, avoidant of co-dependencies.
KEEP SCROLLING DOWN FOR IN DEPTH EXPLANATION
“The only way to survive is by taking care of one another.”
-Grace Lee Boggs.
IN DEPTH:
She is introspective while sitting with friends in a cozy chair. It’s sunset, and her friends have joined her for an evening drink. They all bring their own beverage but hers stands out. Her tall mug proudly sits at her helm. It has a matching lid that keeps the flies out and the beverage temperature just so. A drink is always a vessel for more than just liquid. The flavor, the preferences, the little rituals around it, the mouth-feel, and how it all sits inside.
To achieve change, we too must change and be changed. Any drink is a special kind of pleasure and medicine, and her drink is designed to be kept in love and protection. It is an enigma how a woman so old can be so young; so full of radical curiosity and visionary thought. It’s enough to make you wonder ‘what’s in that cup’?
The muse for our Queen of Cups is the brilliant civil-rights activist and philosopher Grace Lee Boggs. She initially garnered attention for her years of collaboration with C. L. R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya in the 1940s & 50s and involvement in the Socialist Workers Party. Later, she and James Boggs, her husband of some forty years, took their own political path: forming alternative political movements, collectives, community gardens, schools, writing books and publishing them. She was the subject of an FBI file that investigated the Black Panthers and Black Nationalist movements. When the files were released, it revealed comments speculating Boggs is “probably Afro-Chinese”. The racist assumption had no factual bearings other than a testament to her being a true sister of the revolution.
A mentor to future generations of activists and organizers, her work is an incredible reminder of that our struggle exists in a long and rich history, an intergenerational tradition with wisdom that stays current. Boggs committed herself to revolutionary-thinking and community-organizing into the last days of her hundredth year.
“Love isn’t about what we did yesterday; it’s about what we do today and tomorrow and the day after”
― Grace Lee Boggs, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century
“Movements are born of critical connections rather than critical mass.”
― Grace Lee Boggs, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century
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