Founder's Letter

None of us wanted to be the heirs.

It cost too much. The world may like you — but they will never welcome you in.

So we go quiet. We learn to adapt. We learn to be someone else.

But there was another kind of alone. Okinawa. Base to base, a bus with nowhere permanent to belong. Nobody to perform for out there. Just headphones, Fred Hammond, and a blank page — sketching clothes nobody would ever see.

I spent thirty years trying to be found. Hoping someone would hear me. Someone close could see me. Longing to be found.

But I was never lost. He saw me on that bus the whole time.

Set apart was never meant to be set alone. It was so we could find each other. The brilliant ones. The peculiar ones. The called out ones. Christ-like ones.

For nearly three hundred years “The Name” could cost you everything.

They wore it anyway — not to rebel. To be recognized, as heirs. As light to the world.

We don’t wear black. For we neither mourn nor hide in darkness.

We wear gold. Because our testimony is light and The tomb is empty. “The Name” remains.

This is not a sermon. It’s a signal.

I am not better than you. I made a choice. I want you to make it too.

☧ In this sign.