Laid at my Steps

Ask and it will come. Literally! knocking at my front steps.

Since Ui-Seng's birth, Frantz and I have pegged our little daughter for a life of performance. With a natural charisma, a command of her audience, a thoughtful awareness of people, and unassuming beauty, (I know! I am her mother!) she seemed destined for a life on the stage in front of bright lights.


Well, of course, then they grow up and begin to assert their own opinion. Ui-Seng does NOT WANT to be a big star on TV, performing in front of lots of people. NO! She refuses. And insists her role remains behind the scenes: writer, director, supporter of her more spotlight loving peers. In their current peer-inspired class production of Elementary School Musical, she is preparing the script and writing the lyrics to the songs.

So much for her destiny on the receiving end of the camera....

Last night, Suzie, a neighbor we have known for much of the eight years we have been in Baltimore knocked on our door unexpectedly. Suzie's daughter, Cleo, is completing her junior year at Baltimore School for the Arts. We have watched her grow up since 6th grade. She has been active in local theater since we met her, a participant in the School for the Arts TWIGS Theater program. The Fells Point Corner Theater is one of the local neighborhood theaters Cleo has been involved with forever, and tonight, they were in desperate need for children to cast in their Christmas Pageant.

"Can you come around to the theater and check it out?!"

We threw on our coats and headed to the theater, literally 5 houses away from ours, the kids whispering to me through gritted teeth, "we are NOT auditioning for this play." Neverthless, we visited and were invited to come WATCH their rehearsal on Thursday.

"The part is theirs if they will take it."

We will see what will happen on Thursday, although Evains has already been enticed at the prospect of playing a naughty boy who does not know how to behave in church and disrupts service with his little friend.

Me? I believe destiny knocks when we surrender our will to control it.

Groundswell

In an early debate, Clinton, Edwards, and Obama were asked who MLK would support in the current campaign. While Clinton and Edwards made the case for why they themselves would be the candidate of choice, Obama presciently stated MLK would support none of them, rather be involved in creating a groundswell of pressure on whoever the winning candidate would be.

In his early years, Obama started building on the ground, the footprint of which can be seen in the structure of his campaign "to get elected"! (I wonder if Palin understands now what "community organizing" is? ok. Perhaps not yet. We'll give her four years of folks sitting around kitchen tables strategizing her future campaigns to finally "get it." Then again, maybe not!) His swift rise to the top of the power bubble leaves Obama in a unique position of being closer to the ground than any other president in a long time.... And with an awareness that now he must be pushed by the ebbs and flows, whether they are the forces of multinationals, corporate lobbyists, the Bilderberg Group, or ....the people on the ground.

The body has a way of injecting adrenaline into a wound to numb the body from feeling pain. On June 4, 2008, Obama addressed AIPAC and slashed the first deep wound into my political and humanitarian psyche. Quickly the adrenaline rushed in. Over the course of this campaign, more and more adrenalyn pumped into me through the huge corporate presence and private "blue dog parties" at the democratic national convention, his support of FISA, his rhetoric of aggression and war during the debates, nuclear power, more drilling, "clean" coal (what?!?!), and more recently, support of the bailout bill. Today, Barack Hussein Obama selected Rahm Israel Emanuel to be his Chief of Staff.

OUCH!!! OUCH! ouch. ouch... ok. I'm numb again.

I am happy we have President Obama!! I just can't seem to feel the joy with all this numbing adrenalyn pulsing through my body.

I believe in the realm of his possibility. I believe in the righteousness of his heart. When Obama was on the ground, he built relationships with Palestinian and Arab leaders in his Chicago community. I, too, feel the pressure of Israel and feel at a loss as to how to compromise this pressure with my passion that Israel is an illegitimate state built on the direct genocidal elimination of a people evicted from their homeland. Aaha! ...perhaps now I see the deep bond between Israel and the US!

>breathe<

However, all sides need to come to the table with the heart of forgiveness and allowance to move forward together with justice in peace. Since his days on the ground, since the days of his AIPAC speech, Obama has not visited a mosque, been very careful about images associated around him that may infer anything "moslem," associated himself with more and more staunch advocates of Israel while distancing himself from Palestinian academics and leaders, and continued to engage in the rhetoric of the Israel lobby ...all in response to "pressure." Understandably, all voices deserve to be heard, but at the expense of those who will piss them off if they happen to be powerful? Obama's marginalization of the Arab American community needs to be mended. But we need a GROUNDSWELL of pressure to back him up on this. Here is my first point of groundswell...