From the Executive Director

Elika Dadsetan-Foley

Happy 2023 to those on the Gregorian calendar! For those who may have ever wondered how we came to celebrate January 1 as our first day of the year, I invite you to read on. 🙂

The Gregorian calendar was developed by Pope Gregory XIII and the Catholic Church in 1582 - it was a calendar based in mathematics and convenience to his community. It was met across the world with resistance because it was the first of its kind to wholly separate the existing clocks from the natural world - which was a very important part of how we’d lived–in sync with nature since the beginning of time. All over the world, until then, we were people who lived moon to moon and season to season. The old calendars measured the passage of time by noticing observable events, and that very interconnectedness with nature and one another was a critical piece of who we were. Instead, there was a forced transition to an artificially created mapping of time where humans were separated from nature and each other, and nature –her rhythms, her significance– was diminished and moved to the periphery. We moved further and further from knowing self as part of a larger system, away from nature and community being our primary contexts as we moved through our days. Other cultures began to frame their own calendars around religion and ethos, and the separations deepened. The drifting apart continued.

“...we begrudgingly adhere to the calendar of the church to make our appointments... But we can still return our feet to the earth and our eyes to the sky in rebellion and in remembrance of our ancestral alignment."

- Harty T. Kelley

So to honor our natural world, I want to acknowledge we are still in a winter season - a time where we historically conserve our energy from now until spring. Like everything else in the universe, our energy ebbs and flows, and this is the season where we tend to our slow-burning embers as we move toward the rebirth of spring and the blazing fires of summer. This slowing down allows us to turn our focus inward. Even as those of us in the northern hemisphere are missing the sun, I invite us all to embrace the darkness and stillness of this season. As nature rests and restores, so do we.

(A quick sidenote: As I purpose to move with intentions this winter season, I also look forward to the “new year” my family and culture has historically celebrated: “Norooz,” which falls on the first moment it turns “spring” every year so it can be at a different time of day each “year” and usually falls on either March 20 or 21).

This work we do can be isolating, discouraging, and depleting. Within our VISIONS community, we try to ensure others feel affirmed, appreciated, reassured, and renewed. We do work that, in the words of Jaiya John, “dares to help birth a new world of human dignity, a world that dissolves the old structures, systems, ideologies, and spirit that incarcerate and traumatize generation after generation.”

Whether you track your days in Gregorian units, lunar cycles, or another calendar, the VISIONS team has been working hard to get to where we are today. We have an incredible foundation, and we continue to build on that legacy with new programming and opportunities to share our tools and approaches. We are working on not being the world’s “best kept secret,” and we are excited to keep expanding our impact while staying connected with (and hearing more from!) all of you.

Wishing everyone a season of abundance and meaningful connection!

In Community,

Elika