Today The World Changed – the inauguration of Barack Obama

The following poem is dedicated to three men who are not here to read it, but were it not for them, I would not be the person that I am today writing it.

It is dedicated to my father Aguinaldo, my brother Alfonso, and my surrogate father Al Wallach.  These three men refused to yield to what they believed to be injustice.  They instilled in me the deep conviction, that if we try to hide from injustice, if we tolerate injustice, or even if we ignore injustice, we are destroying any hope that in this world, there will ever be justice.  They were not here to witness this day – but I think that they planned it that way so that they would have the best seats in Heaven.

Today the World Changed

I did not receive a release of my debts

But still, a debt was paid this day to a people,

To my people

Today the world changed

For one moment

Those men who sat for days to build a foundation

Upon which a more perfect union could be built

And those slaves who gave their blood, sweat and tears

To lay the bricks and mortar that would secure that foundation

And the Red man, from whom all of this was taken

Rose in silent witness

All of those souls – joining hand, and heart

Standing side by side cried tears of Joy

For the resurrection of the Spirit of America

Today the world changed

Not with a bang – but with a whisper

A whisper that resounded throughout the world

And into the Heavens

The sky did not fall

Only that impenetrable ceiling upon which, the words,

“You may rise no further, this club is for “White Men Only”

Came tumbling down like the walls of Jericho.

Today the world changed

The last unyielding, inhumane, bloody chains of oppression gave way,

The spirits of my Hebrew ancestors who escaped Egypt

And had cried that they could not be really free until all mankind was free

Stand, arm in arm with the spirits of all of the slaves that toiled to build this country as the they had once toiled to build the pyramids,

Together their tears of joy rain down on us,

For they are all finally free, and the yokes of slavery and fear

Are removed from their generation

Today the world changed

Millions gathered ,of all ages, races, religions, genders, gay and straight, from all nations and all political ideologies

And above this multitude of men, women and children

Unnoticed, inconspicuous

Flloated  a multitude of Angelic Beings

All huddled together to bear witness to

the New World of Man,

the resurrection of Hope,

the resurrection of faith,

And the resurrection of Divine Love,

Today the world changed

The President of the most Powerful Nation in the world,

Was  raised up by the hands of the thousands of slaves who laid

The path that he walked , who built the stairs that he climbed,

And with pride and overflowing hearts they placed him in the highest seat.

They were able to work through the pain, the blood, and the exhaustion without giving up,

Without laying down to die,

Fueled and Driven by the faith that

One day, if they built it -

He would come

and complete the circle.

Today the world change

Never again can a teacher tell a little black, Hispanic, or native American child,

“You cannot reach for that goal, why even try, just wash dishes, clean houses

Get those foolish notions out of your head”

Never again, can a teen on the corner selling drugs to other teens

be able to say,

“The White man condemned me to this life, it is not my fault”

Never Again will the Black, Latino or Asian child be able to say that there is nothing more to aspire to

because they are Black, Latino, Chicano, or Asian

except to die in a gang.

Because – this day, if we look to our left, and we look to our right, there

Is the White man -

He is not in front -

He is not in control,

He is one of us – Today, the united States of America had declared this from here on,

Open seating

Today the world changed

No more can a boy or girl, living in a blighted ghetto or an arid dying suburb say,

“I cannot become whatever I want”

No one can ever, from this day forward say, I can’t.

No excuses left – no justifications left,

There is no greater or more meaningful role-model

Than the President Of The United States.

Today life’s struggles are still overwhelming us,

The tunnel which now darkly surrounds us

Has become neither shorter, nor easier,

And for so many of us – the light at the end of that tunnel,

Has grown no brighter.

Today the roof of my house shelters my family,

Tomorrow, it may be the roof of our car,

But if I have to struggle through the challenges of each day

This is the world that I want to struggle in.

Today the world changed

The dark and spiritless landscape that I stared out at yesterday

Has become a garden with the just  the tiniest buds of hope, of possibility, and of Light.

Whatever lies ahead for me, I have lived the best of my life.

My greatest fear was that my children would not have the chance to know

what the best might be.

And I know that the best that lies before my children will be much different than mine -

For mine was not real, it was made of glittering dust and ashes of the material world -

like a star we see far off in the distance of the night sky – so beautiful, yet

As soon as we see it, it is dead -

As soon as we obtain that far off material goal – it too is dead,

Ashes to ashes – dust to dust -we search for the next one.

Today the world has changed

The world of my children will not glitter,

It will radiate.

They will remember what being drunk with the world destroyed,

And so they will seek joy – and not intoxication.

History will record that this date ushered in a New Age

This is a great man,

but a great man cannot climb great heights alone

A great man can only accomplish great things by standing on

the shoulders of ordinary men and women,

Today the world changed

It changed because of white, black yellow and red, Jew, Christian, Muslim, Sufi, Buddhist, Taoist, Hindi, Mormon, Atheist,, Agnostic, and all other faiths -

men and women, gay and straight,

and the littlest of children,

the tiniest of Angels,

all raised him up, with their voices, and their prayers

pledged their toil, their struggles, their nickels, their dimes, their hopes and their dreams.

Because although this man is great

equally great are the people, the nation and  the world that would not let him down.

Today the world changed

Because one man claimed his place in history,

and showed us that we must claim our voices,

We must shout from the rooftops until we are heard,

And never, never be silent again.

He reminded us, and the world that this is our country -

and in the greatest sense – it is the country of the world -

there is no nation that does not have its own seeds planted in this garden.

And Today the World Is Proud to Be An American

And I am proud to have my country back

Today the world changed

I have my Statue of Liberty back,

This Lady was given to us as a reminder of who we are,

and why we are,

As clearly etched eternally on her foundation:

I have taken my faith back,

Knowing in my heart and soul that this moment has sealed it

forever.

Whatever happens, for better or for worse cannot erase,

cannot tarnish,

cannot touch in any way the undeniable fact,

That Today Happened

And it happened to every man woman and child in the world,

And with that faith – I have a reason to go on.

Today the world changed

The Last Great door opened wide today

The Last “Whites Only” sign

Has come down,

And with it, the last excuse for not trying,

or forever yielding the fight Before it’s begun

The White Man has not surrendered -

better than this,

He has realized that we are all in it together

And to stand, we must stand together

Today the world changed

All because one man, foolhardy enough to think that he could,

Promised millions of people around the world, that, “Yes We Can,”

And yes, together we did,

Today The World Changed

This is for every little child of every race, religion, and national origin,

you can dream even bigger,  reach for that far off star

even farther,

And for every man or woman who sees -Nothing

Whose lost -Everything,

You!  Find that dream, dust it off,

And dream it like you’ve never dreamed before,

Search for that star

You long ago lost track of,

And MOVE!

RUN!

REACH !

Everything is possible so long as we

Can hold our dreams

and keep our eyes on our stars,

T oday the world changed

Today, with brown hand placed on the Bible, this man said, “I accept”

And we heard his heart say to us,

I accept your trust, I accept your faith,

I accept your dreams and your hopes.

I accept your need to believe

and I will honor them,

and I will honor you

with every breath in every day.

Today the world changed

On this cold, clouded winter afternoon

We were warmed, united in sacred ceremony

That at last

Meant something

in a place within each of us that we no longer dared go,

Under a common shining light

As One Nation, under God, with Liberty and Justice For All

It matters not what tomorrow brings -

whatever it brings will pass

Only this moment will shine forever

Through whatever darkness lies ahead

It will shine

It will shine until the last hungry child is fed,

It will shine until the last sick child is healed,

And it will shine until the last guns have been beaten into plowshares,

And until the missiles have been beaten into pruning hooks:

and nation no longer lifts up a sword against nation,

And  neither shall we learn war any more.

Today, The world changed

And nothing again as long as we live will ever be deemed, impossible.

There is One Enemy and That Is The Hypocrite

Matthew 13:24-43 (King James Version)

24Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field:  25But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.  26But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.  27So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?  28He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?  29But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.  30Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.

An open mind is an amazing thing.  One day I realized that if I needed an answer to a question, and I could not find it, I just had to leave my mind open – eventually the answer would come.  I extended this to my religious reading and an understanding of the parables of the New Testament and the Books of the Old Testament.  So, in reading the above parable of the Sower and the weeds I could not understand how it was that the Sower thought that the good crop would be picked up with the weeds.  All of the stories are told in terms of the reality that we know so that we could draw a parallel.  However, I easily remove weeds from my garden upon the first appearance because they do not appear alike.  Suddenly, during the Presidential election I saw the true meaning of weeds.  I saw people who said that they believed in God, were “good” Christians and Jews turn into hateful bigoted people.

So what is the Harvest?  Many like to think of it as the “end of days”, when in fact there is no one end of days.  There are many fields in God’s world and many have seen an end of days.  Surely there was an end of days in Germany for six million Jews.  There seems to be an end of days in Darfur.  There was an end of days in Bosnia, Rwanda, and certainly parts of Iraq.  There certainly was an end of days for the thousands killed and still dying due to the World Trade Center attack, and Hurricane Katrina.  No, the Harvest is not connected with the end of days, it is a time when we are ripe and bear fruit.  That time is not the same for everyone – It is how we each answer when we are called to show ourselves.  When Obama ran for President I saw so many people grasp at straws to find a politically correct reason to fear his being elected, but their desperation exposed their truth.  They had been living as hypocrites, going to their Churches and Temples lying to the God that demands that we love each other as ourselves, perhaps even lying to themselves.  The Harvest came to the Germans.  Those who risked their own lives to save the Jews were the good crop, and those who turned on them were the tares.

The same holds true in Rwanda, there are so many stories of people who risked their lives to protect those whose lives were threatened, and those who did nothing – harvest.  Today, as millions of people lose their jobs and their homes – while others still spend tens of thousands of dollars on accessories rather than coming to their brother’s aid are showing the fruit – or lack of fruit that they truly bear.  It is not about tithing, it is not about giving of what is extra or comfortable – it is about giving what is needed – even when it requires a sacrifice, because to sacrifice is to make sacred.

Whether our hatred surfaces, our greed, or our indifference to all other life on earth, all is coming to the surface during these testing times.  The real enemy is never the one standing in your face holding a gun – no, the real enemy is the one standing at your back holding a gun on you while he tells you that he is your friend.  There is no greater enemy to man, to the world, or to God than the hypocrite.  The Harvest is when there is no choice but to act in accordance with who we are.  It is when the circumstances are so dire as to force a response that is true to the self – and when no response is equal to a response.

I once firmly believed that the enemy was Religion.  Clearly, at a time of readily available weapons of mass destruction Religion, being divisive, and the cause of so much death and destruction over the past two thousand years had to be our greatest enemy.  This was a disheartening belief, because we cannot do anything about religion.  Then one day I was reading about what it means to be a Jew.  I read:

“How could anyone who believes in the God of the Bible treat his fellow human beings, all of whom are created in God’s image, with less than compassion?”  “To Jews, compassion is the keystone of being a mensch, and so basic a requirement of being human that the Talmud’s Rabbis were willing, at least in theory, to read an unkind person out of the Jewish Community….  From Judaism’s perspective, an unkind person is presumably a non-believer”.

All of this would be intensified for Christianity because it is upon the rock of brotherly love and compassion that Jesus built His Church.  With or without religion, even with belief in One God and One Way – there will still be hypocrites because there is a universal belief in One God, and that God demands that we love and that we understand that we are our brother’s keepers.  Yet, there are still those hypocrites who place themselves above and apart from God by choosing to pretend to live in the image of God while living in the image of the deceiver.  We can only worship and honor God, the noun, by living God, the verb.  So, for many different reasons, the Harvest is coming to, perhaps more fields at once than ever before.  In a sense, it is a time of Revelation, as it was originally depicted – a time when all that has been hidden is being revealed – a time when however hard we try to disguise ourselves – we can no longer hide.  We are in a time when there are only two paths on which to walk – the path for those who are God-ing and choose to serve all as needed, as brothers and sisters under God, and the other path, the one for those who cannot bear to serve any except themselves and those they consider their own.

The road is forked and we must walk that path of who we are.  I never really grasped the big deal made of hypocrites in the Bible before now.  Now, I realize that a hypocrite is a promised vote that cannot be counted on, a promised service that cannot be depended on, a promised hand that cannot be trusted to be there, a promised fire that will cause one to freeze, a promised meal that will cause one to starve, and a promised ally that will cause one’s defeat.  The hypocrite is the one you trust to be there and because of whom you look no further.  The enemy that you know can make you strong; the one that you don’t know will destroy you.  We don’t need to eliminate religion – we need religion to eliminate hypocrites.  In the days to come religion too, will be revealed, it will be known by its members.  A whole is the sum of its parts.  It is perhaps the decade of harvest, and what will be separated out will be the hypocrites.  What are the “Meek” who will inherit the earth?  Perhaps meek means simple – clear – transparent.  Perhaps it is the true, the transparent who will inherit the earth.

We May Not Need Healing Just Awareness Of Growth

A pile of bricks may look like something that was knocked down, broken, but perhaps it is really something in the process of being completed. Perhaps we can’t heal because we are not broken, just in the process of our own perfection. We are so deeply committed to being broken, to believing that there is something wrong with us because life is not perfect that we miss the fact that everything is part of a process – not yet there is different than being lost.

I am interracial. I learned about the racial separations of people when I watched the movie, “Imitation of Life” This sad movie about a Black maid who has a child by a White man, who worked for a White woman and her daughter. Their lives were doomed because the child who tried to pass for White and was ashamed of her mother and of her own racial identity. After I watched the movie I asked my mother if I was a Negro and she said yes. I asked her if she was a Negro and she said, no. I asked her if my father was a Negro and she said, yes. I told her that I wanted to be White like her. I was devastated. Maybe that was why my mother did not like me. I kept thinking about the pain in the movie. I tried to escape the issue, never using the colors black or white. When I went to the soda shop and asked for a malted I would ask for a blue and blue malted. My mother would whisper to the clerk that I really want a black and white malted so that I would not hear. My world was small, and it was all White except for me. Everyone seemed happy except for me. Maybe there was a connection, there was in the movie.

Interracial sounds like you are part of two races. The true feeling was one of belonging nowhere not a part of either race. I was not Black and I was not White. I was a zebra, an Oreo cookie something that appeared to be feared. I wished that I knew other members of my in-between race. Since I was obviously not White, I tried to be Black; there I met with surprising hostility. I just assumed that Black people would want me. Of course I know now that my personality did not help. It is quite remarkable how we wear our self image on the outside. Thinking that no one knows how much we don’t like ourselves we attempt a mask., a lie, but it doesn’t work.. People end up responding to us in the same way that we respond to ourselves.

I was put into psychotherapy when I was in second grade. The private school I attended told my father that I believed my mother did not love me. He told them that she did not. He told me that it really should not matter. I really tried to get on that page with him but it was a little too much of a reach for a 7 year old. Oh, by this time I had a sister, she was the apple of my mother’s eye. Every day as I drew near to where they were waiting I would feel a black hole building in the pit of my stomach and pulling all of my feelings in. It was this withdrawal that my teachers noticed. I did not have a clue as to who I was, I was so lost and confused about what I was.

Today when people meet me they see someone who has it all together. They see someone who is completely centered. They don’t see the road that brought me here, and neither did I. I did not see that I was not broken, that these were not hazards but learning tools. I was not open to the possibility that there could be good ahead. This was not the end for me it was only the beginning, but I could not see it.

We all start with a different deck of cards, but somehow they are all stacked. I went from therapist to therapist trying to find out what was wrong with me and then fix it. Something had to be wrong with me. Who was I? I was a defective mulatto girl who no one wanted. As time passed, I became very vested in my pain. My ego felt safe in this image. Safe being broken. I was a victim first class. I wore the badge and played the role. I repeated that position in all of my relationships. Years and years of therapy and my situation did not change.

There is an ego death in healing. It requires letting go of an identification that has served well from its inception. This of course is not to say that it was wrong. The fact is that it was the right step for us to be on at the time. And if we have reached an answer it is because of the way that we have taken not in spite of it. Each road that we take is a road that leads us to where we need to go. With so many people seeking to heal, and so many people coming out and speaking about their dysfunctional beginnings and lives, perhaps it is not dysfunctional at all.

If everyone is in some process of healing, perhaps we should realize that it is not healing that we need. In order to build our muscles we exercise, we lift weights, the heavier the weight the stronger our muscles become. This is not just physical. Those things that occurred in our lives that we consider hurtful, those things that we are healing from are merely the weights that in this life we have to lift in order to become stronger, in order to grow in whatever area we have chosen in this life. We are not healing we are growing and it is through the resistance, through the challenges and yes, the pain, that we gain the greatest strength and the greatest power. No one is lost. We do not come here with some sort of map that some of us misplace. We come here with a plan, with a path that is emblazoned in our souls. The markers come along the way from the experiences that we have and the feelings that we experience. We need to let go of our judgment of ourselves and let God lead our way

What impedes us is that our ego, our feeling of security is totally connected with our having been right, even if it hurt. There is the saying, “Better the hell you know than the hell you don’t”, and the truth is that to the ego, the hell you know is better than anything that you don’t know. This block prevents us from being able to receive the guidance that comes from within; we have become so hung up on how we feel now, that we have stopped hearing the wisdom of the Architect of it all. The ego functions in black or white, right or wrong. We need to tell it that it is not an issue of right or wrong it is an issue of right and right, right then and right now. That way was so right that it lead to this way.

Life will no longer give us any form of security if we try to live it based upon the tried and true. Life is being reborn each day and with it so must we. Each day there is a new set of questions that yesterday’s answers do not fit. That does not mean that yesterday’s answers were wrong, they were right yesterday. The problem that we are faced with is not that we did anything wrong, it is that we are constantly trying to make what worked before work now. This is a new age, none of the old rules apply. We must lovingly examine our lives in a beautiful new way. If life were a school, what are the lessons that my life would be meant to teach me? Where can I forgive more, love more, care more, feel more for others? How can I apply the spiritual principals that I am here to learn to the experiences that have brought me here? I can look at my life today and fully understand the necessity of the path that brought me here. And I have faith that I may not understand why the things that happen to me now, painful things, are happening, but when I reach the place that they will lead me, I will know exactly why I was meant to travel that road.

We do not need to question ourselves and find fault with the methods we had for dealing with life; we merely need to be open to new methods appropriate to new lives. It is vital that we now open ourselves to the world as it is, changing and adapting with each day.

There are new situations and each of us can face them and find all that we are seeking simply by recognizing that we live a new “now” in every moment. We can satisfy our hunger by being open to the food that we are given. We need to receive answers without judging ourselves for not having seen them before. We did not see them before because they were not appropriate before. We see what we need to see exactly when we need to see it. We prevent ourselves from growing and living in the present because we are tangled up in the judgment of our lives and our actions in the past rather than understanding the importance to our growth of handling our lives the way that did at the time.

Anything new requires us to change something that we thought, or felt before. That change does not mean that before we were wrong, it just means that before was before. There is no reason to apply what we learn today to what we did yesterday. What we need to do is to apply what we learn today to today. We cannot criticize what we did yesterday based on the new information that we have today.

We can heal by realizing that we do not need to heal, we need to learn, we need to understand, we need to release – which is what forgiveness means, and then move on. Living requires being open and able to receive what is here today. The What is new in no way denies the validity of what was old. What we do can in no way reflects badly on what we did, each thing is appropriate to its time, each action was appropriate under the circumstances within which it occurred.

Our lives, when examined well, show us the perfection of our living. If you are reading this, or anything that you have been directed to, it is because there is something in it that is just perfect for where you are now or soon will be. If the information rings a bell, if it feels right, that is because it is the key to the door that you need to open now. It would have never fit before. Each soul has a journey that is perfect for it, and we each walk it perfectly.

Life has changed. Life is constantly changing. We need to be constantly open to those changes. With each new day, our bodies are changing and growing, evolving. So it is that we need to change and grow spiritually and emotionally as well. This is the process of living. Life is not chaos life is growth. My own beliefs, especially my beliefs about God had changed many times, and sometimes I fought the change, but each time I reached a deeper level of love and a deeper sense of awe in the Source of all things, as God changed for me from an old man in Heaven to the most Divine Guiding Loving by mysterious Presence.

In order to heal ourselves and live in the happiness that we all are seeking we need to accept that we have lived our lives well up to this point. We each have battle scars; they are signs of our having lived passed a course. They are not meant to show us where we have failed but where we have succeeded because we went on.

To heal is to grow, to grow is to move forward and use what we have in each moment. Be open to today’s lesson; be ready for today’s gift. Yesterday is complete and perfect unto itself. There are no changes to be made. The cure for the hunger is to be open today to perhaps a new kind of nourishment. Let yesterday’s food pass through us with each yesterday so that there is room enough for todays. Let us not compare today with yesterday and not compare ourselves today with who we were yesterday. They are different.

There is no point in being here if we cannot be open to what it has to offer. Become born again each day. We are to be born anew with each new sunrise. We should be as children each time that we open our eyes and remember that wonder we once felt. Pain is always a part of the past, because each moment is gone as soon as we notice that it is here. Let go and face this day, as if it were your first. In this way we will find healing, even more than that, we will find joy.

As your soul travels its own journey, it will be wonderful, that does not mean only happy, it means full of wonder. You will be open to hear the messages that come to you from the Universe and the help that you will receive from your guides and the Universe itself.