Dear America,

So where are we at this morning?

My girl is home from school today and is sitting on the floor of her room, building little houses out of boxes for her family of puff-ball people.  School is out; teacher's have an admin day to take in all the new liberal dialogue and training tools for brainwashing our kids, so that's pretty cool. not.

I love how my girl still uses her imagination to entertain herself.  I love how it is creative and how she can just sit hunched over cutting and coloring and pasting a little life for her extended family.  Today, she has with her one of her best friends, someone she's known since kindergarten, and it just makes me smile that I am home with her and am witness to an art form of friendship building and childhood. 

My favorite thing about childhood, including my own, is the things we do that do not require an "organization" or uniform; it is kick-the-can and hide-and-go-seek; it is lemonade stands and car washes; it is baseball or hockey in the empty lot; it is staying outside until your mom calls or staying up late with slumber party's playing monopoly, twister, or tic-tac-toe.

I know, I know.  Times have changed.

But this morning I am getting my jollies watching the last bastion of childhood play out right before my eyes and I couldn't be happier. (sweet. She just put on the latest Taylor Swift CD, Fearless; damn it, now she's gonna make me cry).

Makes me wonder more about our dear President; raised on an island, and if not there, planted in a foreign country of Indonesia.  I wonder what games he played or did he have to grow up too fast? 

He liked his father's heritage, his father's image, that we all know.  He calls himself an African-American; yet honestly, what about his other half?  He is, afterall, half white.

According to our President, the love which created a child between his mother and father may have been conceived from a deeper desire to prove something, given it was the birth of an entirely new era for America, the dawn of a new age, an age that would turn America breech for decades to come.

(What happened?)

And in watching our President these last few months, I just have to wonder, black or white, is he really the right model for our children? Does he characterize America and all that she stands for the way I believe it should be?  Does he have the solid childhood, a firm foundation built upon American traditions along with a memory of allegiance and love of country to support his duty to stand before us today as our leader, and more importantly, to teach our children by example?

He doesn't even want to acknowledge his other half. 
He doesn't want to honor the white mother, or grandmother who raised him (unless it offers a chance to help facilitate his argument for nationalized health care). 

What is that about?  Am I the only one who has an issue with this?

Our sitting President holds deep resentments towards the white folk family lineage who is half of the man we see today, and we should feel secure? 

I'm not speaking in reference to just how it affects white people; I'm speaking in terms of how it defines the man; that this kind of prejudice is what he is made of; for it is as clear as day, the identity crisis of his childhood adversely affected how and what he thinks towards the white man, in his own words. 

And there is nothing wrong with looking at this in hopes of revealing how we might all come together, to not only heal America and the racial tensions of today, but the profound opportunity before us, and more specifically, our dear President, to let the wrongdoings and insecurities and pain of the past go.

To be true to himself, and in essence to all of us, our President must recognize who he truly is without prejudice.  He must say, yes, I am proud being half white and half black; for how can he pick just one -- without the other side feeling like the ugly stepchild, or cinderfella?

If thoughts are things, then the President's thoughts reveal not only his past, but perhaps our future; for we are currently under his care -- even though, thank heaven, in God's hands.

If we can't learn to let go of that which harmed us in our childhood, we will go on committing the same mistakes, or worse, never see a day where our kids can truly live peacefully playing and grow up working, along side each other, without someone trying to "teach" all the ways we are different versus all the ways we are the same.

To teach love, we only need to be loving.
To teach forgiveness, we only need to forgive.

From Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, A Prayer for the World:


Let the rain come and wash away the ancient grudges, the bitter hatreds held and nurtured over generations.
Let the rain wash away the memory of the hurt, the neglect.
Then let the sun come out and fill the sky with rainbows.
Let the warmth of the sun heal us wherever we are broken.
Let it burn away the fog so that we can see each other clearly.
So that we can see beyond labels, beyond accents, gender or skin color.
Let the warmth and brightness of the sun melt our selfishness.
So that we can share the joys and feel the  sorrows of our neighbors.
And let the light of the sun be so strong that we will see all people as our neighbors.
Let the earth, nourished by rain, bring forth flowers to surround us with beauty.
And let the mountains teach our hearts to reach upward to heaven.  Amen.

 Love thy neighbor as thyself today; beginning with loving what is inside you-- black, white or both -- and admire all that you are in this moment. 

Black may be beautiful; but White may be wishful. 
When a little of both (are you listening, Mr. President?), hopefully wishing a more beautiful life for us all --equally, as one nation under God.

Make it a Good Day, G

G's gotta go...must go spin the needle for the twister game.
I just love being asked.
Give that another six months.