On Love:

I live with three great guys in a cute house in Ballard, Seattle. We call the place The Dibble House since the Dibble Ave sign is visible from our living room. The joy of my week is hosting people on Thursday evenings for our weekly Dibble House Dinner, a warm home cooked dinner with dessert and usually wine. The night always ends with a heated battle of Spicy Uno - essentially regular uno with a few extra fun rules. There’s no better way to build community and foster relationships than a tasty home-cooked meal. The amount of laughter, deep conversations, and good food is enough to fill my soul for the rest of the week. There isn’t a better recommendation I could give you to deepen the relationships in your life than to host a meal with the people you love. 

On Justice:

The journey towards justice is a journey towards awareness. Sometimes that awareness starts with yourself. Freshman year of college at Gonzaga University I took an implicit bias test that changed everything for me. The test had me associate positive words with black people and negative words with white people shown on my laptop. Then it would flip and ask me to associate negative words with black people and positive words with white people. Based on how fast you are at making the associations, the test reveals any internal biases. After taking the test, I was shocked to see that I had a preference towards white people over black people. As a black man myself, I couldn’t believe how I could have a bias for white people over black. This was the catalyst that forced me to reflect on my upbringing.

My siblings and I were adopted by a loving white family, but growing up I never had any mentors who were black or teachers who looked like me. It wasn’t until my senior year of college that I had a black professor or teacher in all of my years of schooling. When I look at how the media has historically portrayed black people in the news, it’s usually been in a negative light. Over time I was able to recognize where this bias had come from and do the deeper work of becoming more culturally competent throughout my college years. I don’t know where you’re at in this journey towards more justice, but this implicit bias test is a good place to start. 

On Generosity:

“It’s not that you don’t have enough time, it’s just that it isn’t a priority for you.” I learned this the hard way when my sister repeated these same words to me in high school after asking me if we could hang out together and me telling her I didn’t have enough time. I had told her weeks earlier that I had come to this realization of the concept of time and now I was being challenged with not making her enough of a priority in my life. Our time is one of the greatest gifts that we can give to others. It’s so special because we only have a limited amount of it. My encouragement today is for you to look at your calendar and make sure that it is a reflection of your actual priorities and to make a change if it’s not. 

A question for the day: 

• What or who in your life do you need to re-prioritize?

Resource of the Week: 

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures attitudes and beliefs that people may be unwilling or unable to report. It’s essentially a test for bias. The test was created in collaboration with researchers from The University of Washington, Harvard, and The University of Virginia. 

• Link to Test

If you know of anyone who might be interested in taking this journey towards more Love, more Justice, and more Generosity in their own life and in the world, please send them this link which will allow them to sign up (or copy and send: https://ljg.beehiiv.com/subscribe). 

Thank you for being here. 

With Love, Justice, and Generosity,

Michael Larson