Outrage: Who are we becoming?

There is a special woman I have come to know and love who lives in Ohio. From the first, her soul touched me. She inspires me with her writing and with her life. Her son is a junior at Princeton. He was visiting a friend at Bowling Green State University. This morning I woke up to this post of hers on Facebook. 

My son Mandela was wrongfully arrested and incarcerated last night while sitting on a porch drinking water waiting for his friends to arrive. When he saw the police, he got up and entered his friends' house and called her. She immediately called the police and asked what the problem was. They said "A black male is on your property." She assured them that he was their guest. She told Mandela to go back out on the porch and tell them he was a guest. When he went out the door, they yanked him out the door, handcuffed him and arrested him for "obstruction of justice." He was stripped, showered and put in an orange jumper. It took him 8 hours to get in touch with any of his family. He is traumatized and violated. We are all extremely upset.

There were over 50 comments. Expressions of love and sadness and anger. And then this post: 

We are heavy hearted tonight, and Mandela is feeling unsafe to drive alone at night in this moment. A post-traumatic stress reaction. Prayers please. Thank you for your loving and outraged responses. We do have a civil rights lawyer looking in on this as well as calls to ACLU and NAACP (thanks to uncle Jeremy) and a lot of other excellent advice, but it doesn't stop the hurt we're feeling or change what happened. We're not clear yet what will ever make this right.

I keep thinking 

We are all extremely upset. About the 8 hours. Was there n humanity in any of the people who came into contact with Mandela to connect with him long enough to realize what a mistake they were making? Did no one ask a question to which they really listened to the answer? How dehumanized have the police, have we become?

They deprived him of his rights but they can never take his dignity!

A Coach in Your Pocket

A smart creative woman and author, Suzyn Jackson, reviewed our recent eBook, Conversations for Making Moments Matter. We are grateful! If you were on the fence about getting it...read this first. 

Here is the lnik to her site...

http://suzynjgonzalez.com/2012/03/21/making-moments-matter-a-guide-to-conversations

 

Wake Up & Wander into New Territory

   

 

Head on over to Story Charmer and take a hot drink with you. I am kicking off Pema Teeter’s Spring series on waking up and shaking up our thoughts and our actions.

 

I explore the question of what success really is and how to help people start relying on each other in ways that might put me out of business.

 

There are a wonderful set of comments already that have given me lots of food for thought.

Add yours!

See you over there…

 

Are you? Were You? Will you be?

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Married… that is! I have been eagerly awaiting the publication of Going Home Married: How to Plan a Meaningful Wedding Without Losing Your Mind by Suzyn Jackson Gonzalez.

 

Suzyn is a talented writer with a down home sense of humor so I knew I would laugh. (I did).  I also knew she was wise beyond her years and I would learn from this book. (I did).

 

What I had not realized is that even without the years of training I have put in, she gets relationships and how to create meaning- in her bones.

 

What I love about this book (even though there is no immediate use for me- 21 years and counting thank you very much!) is that it gets at the core of what is important.

 

Suzyn gets right to the point- It is not about the magazine driven mayhem that wedding planning has become. It is about you and your partner. It is about building a life and setting the tone for how that life together will begin.

 

The book is content rich AND a workbook. And because the questions Suzyn asks are so fundamental and important- it is more than a workbook. It becomes a repository for your (you & your partner’s)  most heartfelt dreams and closely held values.

 

The beautiful cover ensures this will be a keepsake that stays with the wedding album and will be pored over for years to come.[[posterous-content:pid___0]] 

Oops—wrong road

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Have you ever had this experience?

 

You are hiking on a path you have never explored before and you are no longer sure you are following the right signs. Yet there is power in the forward progress so you keep going-resolutely- and the further you go the more you realize you are no longer so comfortable with your surroundings.

It is a little too quiet, you stretch the definition of a “path” to include space between two overgrown roots…and hey, you are an adventurer; the journey is the reward, right? But you are also quite alone.

So you turn back. There is a sense of defeat yet after some time, as fellow hikers come into view you realize how much you have missed the camaraderie and the relief that comes with receiving help.

You are part of a community of hikers. 

What is your hike about?