Surgical Hearts

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This is a rather exotic image... It would be amusing to know who got the great idea of shoving a sword through the heart, as some sort of devotional to Christ? I suspect the image was derived during the Crusades and later developed in Catholic art. Well, surely, it's our way of expressing to God our hurts? The feelings of betrayal we endure, both from ourselves and others? The grief and loss we all experience over wounds that won't heal?


But then, I began to look at this heart as the Surgical Heart... Because it seems, the Sword is inducted from some outer, or outside source, not actually "wanting" to be part of us; on some level, it is placed there intentionally. We have enticed or even welcomed it.

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And yet, we are able to accommodate ourselves to it, and find redemption. We do things like trust our doctors. We trust them enough to cut open our chests, break apart our rib-cages, then go in there and cut away things like an "excess flap". We are even blind about it, perhaps not taking into consideration the effects such a surgery might have, on the long-term physical, or psychological well-being of say, one of our children.

One of the best ways to heal yourself, to build-up the strength of your heart, restore it to health again, is to SING! I invite you to do it!

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Dear Jesus,
with every breath left in me,
let me raise my voice to You.
If there is nothing else to sing for,
I will sing Your Praises,
Lift Your Name to the Highest Rafters,
and Meet With You...
You who heals me,
You who restores me,
You who conquers all that is ill inside of me,
May I sing for You, Lord, like
a thousand birds!
Like the ringing of bells!
Lift me again, Lord, to Meet with You!
Every day
is a new day;
It's a Beautiful Day, Lord,
because of You!

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Smoker's Heart

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This is actually one of the original, older images of the Sacred Heart of Christ. As you can see, the painting style was done with old-fashioned paints, no longer in use; you will find this style in images of the Lord done prior to the 1960's. Please note, the crucifix ascending out of the top of of the heart. This is an interesting addition.


Just yesterday I listened to a blurb on television... That the addictive part of smoking is the nicotine, and not the actual smoking. (I will touch on other substances in later posts.) The real danger that occurs to the heart is inducing it with smoke. The crucifix could be symbolic of self-medication, through nicotine; however smoking is an equal and opposing action which breaks down the integrity of the heart.

With it will come such things as congestion, bacterial infections, and yes, cancer. So the TV discussion advised people to purchase things like nicotine pads and gum to help get their nicotine.

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This week I went to see my Tui Na healer... I have been living with paralysis on the left side of my face and head for at least 3 years that I'm aware of. (It doesn't just happen over night.) Loi is getting the last remnants of paralysis out of me. This week she went into my body through the back of my neck (again), working intensively to move the chi out of the set of muscles that allow us to move our heads up and down. She got my jaw completely unlocked (after 9 years). What surprised me was, how much I wanted a cigarette! And I don't smoke!

But it was a shock to feel some real sensation of relaxation going through that muscle tissue. It reminded me of how pleasurable it used be, to be out with friends having a beer or two, and ask for a cigarette from someone. I clearly understood why it is, occasionally, people feel they want and need to have a cigarette.

But hey! What can I say? At this point in my life???!! I am just happy to be able to move - and do it without any real pain.

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God,
surely You can guide us
to better resources
to help us resolve
our pleasure and pain issues!
Help us
to master our lives
in such a way that we
are not slaves
to the things that bind us.
In Your name,
Jesus, I ask.
Amen


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All-Consuming Heart

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Here is another interesting tattoo I found on the web... As I began to photoshop the image, I found myself contemplating the spiritual meaning behind the idea of an All-Consuming Heart. I think of this as an All-Consuming Heart, because it is simply taking too much energy into itself. So at a very basic level, it is burning itself out, from the inside out.


Here in the first sample, the heart is showing some health and vibrancy in it's color, however it is evident the heart is trying as best as it can to manage various levels of stress.

Again, in some alternative forms of healing, we look at what is going on with the "chi", or the energetic of the heart. As you can see, it is a little blocked at the top where the flames of power are barely able to keep the blood-flow going; it's wings are spread, but barely uplifted or moving.

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Now, with a little change in colorization (which looks more like the original tattoo design) you can witness the degenerate aspects of a heart under a lot of stress. For one thing, the thorns around the heart become more prominent, making the design look tighter, more squeezed. The blood-flow, the chi, are becoming blocked to where there is not enough blood circulating through the heart, and it's wings have become heavy. (Of course, this is all symbolism.) It is an interesting metaphor for what we can do to our hearts with different levels of stress.

Heart-stress can come, for example, by just trying to manage stress. Some people will use caffeine as a quick-resort to making a shift in the energy there. Caffeine actually has the effect of tightening the chi-flow even more. This not only begins to create a shut-down in the heart, it also affects the integrity of the muscles around the heart... To the extent that a person begins to pressure down on their own bodies, physically, with their arms and shoulders, to try and get some feeling of control. This is dangerous. It can result in things like a locked-up neck and jaw, and also paralysis, if not tended to.

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The best thing for a heart in this condition is... Surround yourself with positive people. Begin the process of clearing the negative junk out of your environment... Including bad relationships; people and situations that seem to hold you back; old clutter, things that keep you locked to the past.

Check out your environment for any possible thing that might be causing allergies. If it's your cat, find your cat a new home. Maybe it's time quit that job? If your boss is a big old bitch, go work at MacDonald's. Find another major in college. Change to a better adviser. See if you can get help at home with the children. Say "no" to your adult children who are just using you for money. Insist they move out.

Start asking God about how to release your guilt. Seek professional help around how to get free of your guilt.

Think about a total change of lifestyle. Start cutting back on the over-load by getting lots of sleep, lots of rest, and lots of fresh air. This heart is screaming for some real attention!

Choose to stop participating in things you don't enjoy.

Choose to let people know you refuse to participate in any conversations that invade your privacy or process.

Get clear.

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God, help me to become more aware of when I am over-tasking myself.
Give me the courage to let go, and let You take over!
I trust You to help me be a good steward of my own heart, Jesus. Amen.


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Wounded Heart

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This image is adapted from a photo of a tattoo... The original painting is on one of the albums by The Cure. I call it the Wounded Heart.

The wounded heart has just witnessed and experienced something horrific; an event or an impact that has damaged its neurotransmitters and opened an inner-eye of awareness, rendering it to be forever changed.

As I contemplate this heart, what comes to mind are the effects of the atrocities of war we are subjected to every day. Whether that war is national, global, ethnic, "terrorist", or happening behind our backs in the office, through parental abuse or neglect, or through the political arenas of our civilian lives as gross and unjust discrimination, we FEEL it. We SEE it.

We may not know it or participate in it directly, but we are changed by it. The wounded heart comes to us with a certain level awareness, one that gets carved in our hearts, leaving complex scars and deeply-resonant surges of pain, regret, guilt, even sado-masochism. Trends which may, for the most part, never get resolved unless we get professional help.

Many children growing up during the events of World War II, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the radioactive atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by America, are our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents today. (And let us not forget the "accident" at Chernobyl, in 1986...) These little children also grew up with comedy shows and "slap-stick" such as Laurel and Hardy and The Three Stooges... Where the characters were slapping, hitting, beating each other with sticks and/or running over each other with cars, trucks and ladders, essentially creating their "comedy" at the expense of someone else. Over time, we have come to see the consciousness behind this sort of humor is sadistic.

Children growing up in the 1940's quickly learned it was considered "cute" to be a pugnacious little brat. (Thinking this behavior is normal, we have also turned around and reinforced it in our own children. After all, we grew up with Bugs Bunny! Great cartoons, but cartoons, nevertheless, and often obnoxious.) Is Seinfeld a sadistic comedy? It has gone along in another vein, showing us how our self-interest can be stupid, vain, self-defeating, and also sadistic. Comedy and tragedy! What makes Jerry Seinfeld a great comedian is his background, and his sense of the absurd.

OK... My point is, some of these children from the Hiroshima Generation have never grown up.

Many often consider the need to get psychological help as being a sign of weakness. At the same time, we are dealing with an epidemic of Americans who are addicted to prescription medications. Not realizing people are often placed on these medications long-term (so they can die), they blindly trust their doctors - because their hearts are closed.

Their hearts are closed, and it is too painful to feel one's own feelings. (Feeling your own feelings would require you to wake-up.)

And we wonder why the hearts of our parents are hardened they way they are... Why it is, their eyes seem to be closed in denial to the pain of other people, and why it is that war continues and thrives to be the "norm". Living in an era where we have so much access to information and education, is it acceptable?

Is it OK to treat ourselves and other living beings as if we are disposable?

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Dear God,
teach me how to be wiser, act smarter,
learn more and open more
to new information, ideas and education.
Keep me from trespassing
over other living beings, intentionally or in ignorance.
Guide me to have the courage
to reach out for professional help.
Teach me how to walk softly
and move gently with this Wounded Heart,
Dear Jesus.
Amen.

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Sometimes I Don’t Know What To Feel
Lyrics by Todd Rundgren

Sometimes I don’t know,
I just don’t know what to feel.

Sometimes I don’t know what to feel...
Everything I thought that I knew
starts to look so unreal!
There’s a ringing in my head
that keeps me awake at night.
Sometimes I don’t know what is right!
Today I saw a car crush my little dog
under it’s wheel...
It did not even stop,
it just sped off - and out of sight!

Sometimes I just feel so afraid,
But I know that no one else has it made...
So if I just believe in myself -
I won’t need no help from nobody else
and I can make it alone.
And everything will be cool.

I got to keep on keepin’ on...
There’s nothing else I can do!

Sometimes I don’t know what to do!
Someone said the world’s going to end -
and I think it’s true.
I thought there was some love in the world
But I guess I’m wrong.
Sometimes I just feel so alone!
I don’t want to admit to my friends
that I feel confused.
I wonder what I’d do with myself
if the world was gone?
Something makes me stay on my feet.
Don’t you dare admit to defeat!

And if I tell myself it’s all right -
I can comfort myself through the night.
And watch another day dawn...
And everything will be cool...

c)Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp; Humanoid Music

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A Faith Prayer

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Christ, I Put My Heart,
My Health and Well-Being in Your Hands.
I trust You to guide me to the places I need to be,
to discover the information I need to access,
in the most perfect timing.
I trust in Your Promises, Lord,
and turn all my needs over to You,
that I may be a tool of Your life-force
and an instrument of Your Message.
I know my doctors are functioning under Your Will,
or I will be guided to better doctors.
People and doctors and medications
may have let me down, Sweet Jesus;
but You keep me lifted, in your Living Light,
elevated above it all.
You never let me down, Dear Lord!


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Doctor's Heart

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This is what the Doctor's heart is like...

For the doctor, the heart is an "organ", inside the body.

For the doctor, it is all about "cardiovascular"...


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Doctors get all-up-into it...

Doctors begin their learning of the heart by the study of charts like this,
in "anatomy and physiology" classes.

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One of the first things a doctor uses
to help with his or her studies of the heart
is an item like this...

This is a mouse-heart slicer.

"Yeeeeek!!!!"

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Next, doctors will graduate to
something like this for "dissection":

This is a pig's heart.
The pig's heart is the closest-looking thing to the human heart.

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For doctors, it is all about "microbiology".



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Teenage Hearts

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Teens have a lot of needs!
Teens need more than just "things" - like ipods and footballs and cell phones...

Teens need to have fun, and be silly.

Teens need things
like buckets of paint and clay,
good shoes to play.
They need art, cartoons, culture
and concerts, dancing, proms and movies...
Costumes, instruments and MAD magazines.
Every teen needs privacy and personal space,
personal grooming, a zit-free face.
They need diet, nutrition
and yummy snacks, too.
They need sleep-ins and camping,
and rest from the flu.

Teens need to learn by
travel and study;
seeing life on the other side
of the fence.
They need mentors to teach them,
good educations,
so they don't act stupid
out of ignorance.

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Give teens
tools and information to become empowered!!
Teach them, talk to them
about things like
meditation, sex education, stress management.

Teens need to be treated
like human beings, not human-doings.
Teach teens about human "being",
and they will find dignity in their lives.

Teens go through so many changes
in such a short time!
Teens need hugs.
Teens need to understand self-defense,
so they won't go to strangers
for love.

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Dear Little Child of God,
I have seen you living the street; blasted out of your mind; wandering the city; lost, unable to find the peace that can only come from inside. I pray for you.

We live in these times where there are no more excuses, where judgment is only a form of blame. It's such a waste of time, for no two people are the same.

If you need help, ask and seek actively; God's light is always unique.

No need to play by society's"game"... Don't get bent-out of shape, or kiss-butt or put gravity into the pain.

Make it your aim to stay light.

Decide today to start living your TRUTH! Come clean and be who you are! Start taking your power, degree by degree. God's promise is to help you get free.

Being judgmental shapes attitudes...

This is why people are frightened, self-serving and rude.

With the right focus, ask for what you need. Live simply and honest, choose not to serve greed. There are plenty of treasures to be shared all around! Just keep your heart light, and your feet on the ground!

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Little Girl and Little Boy Hearts

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The little girl's heart...

is full of sugar and spice and everything nice!

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The little boy's heart...

is full of snaps
and snails and puppy-dog tails!


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Dear God, I know
each human being is special, unique
in their own way.
For this reason it is truly impossible
to compare one person to someone else...
This is why jealousy is so stupid!
A sign of ignorance, really.
We all have our individuality,
God,
complete with the
God-Given gifts and talents
You grant us.
All we have to do is ask
for awareness in our hearts,
in Your name.

It is only through establishing
friendships, relationships with others
that our hopes and dreams and wishes
are shaped.


God, teach the little children
how to find good friends
who are loyal to one another in this way...
(In spite of our differences!)
Amen.


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Family Heart

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The family heart is a collective of many hearts...

This graphic is called "Heart with Thorns" by Panic Alex...

I feel this image perfectly depicts what it's like to be connected to a family heart. There is a lot of beauty and sentimentality there, interlaced with the thorns of pain and guilt, and anger as well.

We often go through our lives analyzing how useful these emotions are. Sentimentality, for example, can be a perverted emotion; especially if it's only real function in our lives is to keep us enslaved. It's from the family heart that we learn how to give our hearts to others. These are the themes that make family "family".

I especially like the Asian undertones in this image. It reminds me of how some families and individuals are so woven and locked into themselves through obligation and tradition.

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God, help our hearts...
Guide us into directions of finding our
living spirituality,
not through dogma or religious rites,
but through the lessons of our hearts.
Help us to go "through" the corruption we encounter
and not get stuck in it,
or become martyrs or victims for it.
Help us to recognize our free will
as being in-tune with You, Lord,
and set us on the right track
to being whole,
with or without our family, if necessary.


For You have promised us these options and choices,
through Your redemption.
You promise us new life
if we forsake these things
in order to be closer to Your Light.
Help us not to dwell too long
in the darkness of the past.
Help us to come into the Light,
dear Jesus.

Jesus Lives!

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Married Hearts

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With the passage of time,

it's the essence, not the orientation of two hearts

which keeps them together...

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Dear Lord Jesus,
there are so many children on this planet
who need good parents.
Help us all to be mindful
of what we can do to make the lives of others
a little easier.
We never really know
where someone else came from.
Help us all to learn
about the essence of spiritual loving,
that we can bring the practice more
into our daily lives,
feeling the companionship we all desire and need. Amen.

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Human Be-In Tribal Heart

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I believe this design was originally intended to represent the "Rainbow People" of traditional American Indian mythology...

Rainbow People are people of all colors and nationalities, coming together with a unified intention to bring healing, peace and love to all living beings. Much of that idealism is coming to the fore today, with our election of President Obama and the changes American want.

Today it is more about getting involved with our world, taking personal responsibility for our actions in a time where there is no excuse for ignorance, blaming or lack of education.

But the general idea of working with diversity has to do with "Being Here Now". In the '60's, Being Here Now was a lot about withdrawing your participation from situations that did not empower you or others, and becoming more present with your "thing", the things you like to do.

The Be Here Now movement was started by a man who called himself Ram Das. Ram Das was also a friend of Timothy Leary. Timothy Leary was a pioneer in using drugs to alter his consciousness... In the same way Native American Indians did their their ancient ceremonies, the hippies of the '60's followed these models of the time.

In the '60's, the idea was all about using consciousness as a way to lift people out from their prejudices and attitudes.

From Wikipedia:

"Turn on, Tune in and Drop Out" is a counterculture phrase coined by Timothy Leary in the 1960s. The phrase came to him in the shower one day after Marshall McLuhan suggested to Leary that he come up with "something snappy" to promote the benefits of LSD. It is an excerpt from a prepared speech he delivered at the opening of a press conference in New York City on September 19, 1966. This phrase urged people to embrace cultural changes through the use of psychedelics and by detaching themselves from the existing conventions and hierarchies in society. The phrase was derided by more conservative critics.

The phrase is derived from this part of Leary's speech:

“

Like every great religion of the past we seek to find the divinity within and to express this revelation in a life of glorification and the worship of God. These ancient goals we define in the metaphor of the present — turn on, tune in, drop out. I mean drop out of high school, drop out of college, drop out of graduate school... [1]

”

Leary later explained in his 1983 autobiography Flashbacks:

“

'Turn on' meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. 'Tune in' meant interact harmoniously with the world around you - externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. 'Drop' out suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. 'Drop Out' meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean 'Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity'.

During the era of the hippie culture, more and more people came to identify with the rainbow and it's potential symbolism of bringing diversity together. A very popular way of young adults and groups getting together was to organize gatherings for music, love-in's and Be-In's.

To attend a Be-In might be a meditation circle or a pow-wow where people are invited to bring all their energy into the moment - to "Be Here Now". Be-In's were about creating sacred space, quiet circles of energy where people could share with one another. Of course, in the '60's the counter-culture shared things like drugs, sex, rock and roll.

At meditation groups, people were invited to bring pictures of their saints, gurus, personal heroes and avatars. Children were always welcome, and people collected things to share and trade, like flowers (fresh and dried), beads, flutes, gongs, chimes, feathers, bread, wine, colorful flags, incense, crystals, etc.

These trends also all came around the time of the Stonewall Riot, when gay and lesbian groups also adopted the rainbow as their symbolic light of unity in diversity.


The Stonewall Riot came on full-fledge the night after Judy Garland's death... Judy Garland played Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz", and sang the song "Over the Rainbow". Since Judy had many gay and lesbian fans, they wanted to meet in public together to grieve her passage; however they were denied a place to gather, and their grief shortly turned into a riot at a place called Stonewall.

Please feel free to share more what you know here, or find more info about all this on the internet.

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Dear Jesus, please help me to catch on quickly
when someone is being sneaky and not even bothering
to meet me half-way.
Help me to understand and learn...
The differences between privacy, and healthy boundaries,
and outright lying.
Help me Lord, to see through these things right away.
Direct me to the kinds of human bein's I need to "be with"...
People who are present with me,
not holding back on the truth of who they are
or what I need to know,
in order that I can be whole and happy
in sharing myself with them.

Dear God, we all have needs...
Please direct me to the sorts of people
who respect themselves and also respect me.
In Jesus Name, I ask;
Amen.

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Jesus, I Trust In You

JESUS, I TRUST IN YOU

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by Saint Sister Faustina
APOSTLE OF THE DIVINE MERCY

I want to be completely transformed into Your mercy and to be Your living reflection, O Lord. May the greatest of all divine attributes, that of Your unfathomable mercy, pass through my heart and soul to my neighbor.

Help me, O Lord, that my eyes may be merciful, so that I may never suspect or judge from appearances, but look for what is beautiful in my neighbors' souls and come to their rescue.

Help me, that my ears may be merciful, so that I may give heed to my neighbors' needs and not be indifferent to their pains and moaning.

Help me, O Lord, that my tongue may be merciful, so that I should never speak negatively of my neighbor, but have a word of comfort and forgiveness for all.

Help me, O Lord, that my hands may be merciful and filled with good deeds, so that I may do only good to my neighbors and take upon myself the more difficult and toilsome tasks.

Help me, that my feet may be merciful, so that I may hurry to assist my neighbor, overcoming my own fatigue and weariness. My true rest is in the service of my neighbor.

Help me, O Lord, that my heart may be merciful so that I myself may feel all the sufferings of my neighbor. I will refuse my heart to no one. I will be sincere even with those who, I know, will abuse my kindness. And I will lock myself up in the most merciful Heart of Jesus. I will bear my own suffering in silence. May Your mercy, O Lord, rest upon me.

O my Jesus, transform me into Yourself,
for you can do all things.

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"Everybody Wants a Piece of Me" Heart; Obama Inauguration

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Obama Rides through History on Pennsylvania Avenue
Ghosts of Pennsylvania Avenue

The Washington road has been the scene of hate, oppression, possibility and progress. Obama will make the trek past dramatic civil-rights landmarks, and won't stop until he reaches the White House.


By Faye Fiore
10:47 AM PST, January 19, 2009
REPORTING FROM WASHINGTON -- When Barack Obama takes his triumphant ride along Pennsylvania Avenue Tuesday, he will retrace the path of Ku Klux Klan marches and roll past the ghosts of hotels and movie theaters that used to turn away people like him.


This historic stretch, book-ended by the Capitol on one end and the White House on the other, has witnessed many of the milestones that made an Obama presidency possible. The Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were signed here.

But it's doubtful that even a Harvard-educated wonder can get his arms around the scope of the civil-rights drama that has played out on this 1.2-mile slice of real estate.

There are places more famous for their scars -- Selma, Birmingham -- but none captures the sweep of the story the way Pennsylvania Avenue does, where laws were passed to enslave people and laws were passed to free them, and at least a dozen of Obama's predecessors would sooner have considered him a piece of property than a peer.

Nearly every president has made this ceremonial trek since Thomas Jefferson did it on horseback. But never has the setting been as connected to the nation's shame as much as its glory.

"That juxtaposition is the way I always think of Pennsylvania Avenue -- a place of great possibility and of great evil," said Lonnie Bunch, director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. "It is a mirror of change in America."

Obama and his family will ride up the promenade in an armored 2009 black Cadillac limo after he takes the oath of office on Capitol steps built by slaves.

At 3rd Street, the motorcade will pass what used to be the St. Charles Hotel, a popular stop in the early 1800s where slaves were kept in underground cells while their owners enjoyed the luxuries upstairs; reimbursement was guaranteed if any escaped.

"That hotel became a favorite of black patrons after the Civil War," said Charles Cobb, an author and professor of Africana studies at Brown University.

At 4th Street, a block from the hotel that made sure no slave escaped, the new president will pass what used to be the American Colonization Society Hall, founded in 1816 to return emancipated blacks to Africa, an effort fueled in part by whites who believed there was no place in America for a free black community.

Tension between races was inborn for a democracy founded on a contradiction -- 12 of the early presidents were slave holders, eight while in the White House.

From the start, the heart of the nation's capital -- a broad avenue designed by Pierre L'Enfant that was a dusty mess until it became the town's first paved street -- was a place of mixed signals. Some freed blacks operated successful businesses while their brethren continued to be sold off in chains.

While in the White House, President Jackson kept 150 house and field slaves back on his Tennessee farm. It was under his nose one night in 1835, at 6th and Pennsylvania, that a white mob ransacked the Epicurean Eating House and tried to lynch its black owner, a man named Beverly Snow.

Today, just a few doors down, an elegant pink building with twin spires stands as a monument to the civil-rights struggle: The National Council of Negro Women headquarters, purchased with the help of Oprah Winfrey six years ago, is the only black-owned property on this famous stretch.

Inside, Dorothy Height, 96, a lifelong activist and president emeritus of the civil-rights advocacy group, keeps an office.

"No inaugurated president will leave the Capitol to go to his house without passing our house," she likes to say. Known for her trademark hats -- one day last week ti was dusty blue with a big rhinestone-studded bow -- she was preparing to attend a swearing-in ceremony she did not think she would live to see.

"Barack Obama presents a strong symbol of what we have achieved under the hardest conditions," said Height, who won a scholarship to Barnard College as a young woman but was denied admission because of her skin color.

The symbolism is even bolder considering the building is steps from 7th and Pennsylvania, where a teeming market of slaves, penned up in filth and misery awaiting sale, was a lucrative enterprise.

Obama will be halfway to the White House when he passes it. There is little to mark that it even existed. But, according to Bunch, a visiting British writer once noted that the business going on in the Capitol was drowned out by the anguished wails of families being separated and sold.

"We forget, but slavery was so embedded into the American system, it shouldn't be a surprise that slaves were traded within the shadow of the Capitol," Bunch explained.

Slavery was outlawed by 1865, but the inequality persisted. Blacks were barred from jobs, hotel rooms, toilets and restaurant counters. Pennsylvania Avenue led the nation in a dance: two steps forward and one step back.

Franklin Roosevelt opened the war-industry jobs to blacks after he was threatened with a massive march on Washington. Woodrow Wilson segregated the federal workplace to appease his offended wife.

And somewhere along this street, a sailor named Sam Harmon, stationed in Virginia during World War II, was denied admittance to a movie theater when the clerk saw the hand that reached for the ticket was black. He walked the streets that night in tears.

"As you move into the '50s and '60s, Pennsylvania Avenue is reflective of a segregated America," Cobb said. "Black people cooked in the restaurants that served the capital but couldn't eat in them."

For nearly 100 years after slavery was outlawed, Pennsylvania Avenue did little to advance justice. Then in 1964, President Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act outlawing discrimination in hotels, restaurants and department stores. Martin Luther King Jr. stood over his shoulder at the White House.

Four years later, smoke could be seen rising from Pennsylvania at 7th Street when riots broke out as word reached black neighborhoods north of downtown that King had been assassinated.

At 10th Street, Obama will pass within a block of Ford's Theater, where Lincoln was shot by actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865. As if in a flurry to honor his legacy, Congress would adopt the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments outlawing slavery, making former slaves citizens and giving black men the right to vote.

One result: Black businessman James Wormley opened the capital's first integrated hotel at 15th and Pennsylvania, a block from the White House.

Obama's ceremonial journey will end at the nation's most famous address -- 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. For decades, the windows offered a view of slaves servicing the elegant homes on Lafayette Square.

Today, in that same spot, record crowds will gather -- braving confounding security, epic bathroom lines and biting cold -- to watch Pennsylvania Avenue dance another step forward.

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Everybody wants a piece of me, God!
For a short time, I even get to be a "Rock Star"...
The personal is always political, Lord.
It takes tremendous courage to endure this kind of pressure from people,
but I'm good!
I'm okay!

Help me to help them Get It, God...
It's all about sharing!


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Hope Hearts; Road to the Inauguration

AN AMERICAN MOMENT: ROAD TO THE INAUGURATION
A narrative of racism and hope

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Bob Dunn's stories of poverty, taunts, war and elections weave through 80 years of American history. The climax, for him, was Obama's historic rise. 'It is almost as though I am on air.'


By PETER H. KING
peter.king@latimes.com

January 17, 2009
Reporting from Willingboro, N.J. -- He sat at the kitchen table and told his stories -- 80 years of American history -- a child of the segregated South, just four generations removed from slavery, who went on to serve in the U.S. Army as a lieutenant colonel assigned to the Pentagon. They cover a long arc, Bob Dunn's stories do.

The stories drift back to his mother, who was strapped into a plow harness because the family could not afford a mule, through dark days of threats and taunts and learning to hold his tongue in the company of whites, ever on alert, and finally forward to election night when he sat in this same room and watched on television as Barack Obama was elected president, and felt almost as if he had floated away from his trim body.

Dunn told his stories in no particular order, apologizing for gaps in the narrative: "I put it out of my mind so much that I can't go from one to another. I go around and around."


There was the incident back in his hometown of Kinston, N.C. He was 13 years old, working as a delivery boy. One of his friends was a white boy named Sammy Manning, who worked in the same grocery store.

Late on a Saturday night, he and Sammy pulled out curved butcher knives and playfully began to reenact a sword fight from an Errol Flynn film. Dunn's knife nicked the other boy on the ribs, just enough to draw blood. Sammy slugged him and ran for home:

I had been there long enough to know that he is not going home to be bandaged. He is going home to spread the word that he got cut. . . . So I said, what is he going to do? And what are they going to do? Of course, they were lynching black people back then.

Sure enough, in about 15 minutes, Sammy showed up with his mother and a whole crowd of people, out there in front of the building, and I heard his mother say, "Where's that nigger that cut my Sammy?"

Oh my God. I was going to go back over there and explain to her that it was an accident. Well, that was the most stupid thing I did because --"There he is! Right there!" -- they took off after me. And I took off running, and I was a real good runner at the time.

And it was raining that night. And I cut into a little alley where there were houses and dived under a house. They went up and down trying to figure out which way I went.

I remember there was a dog under the house . . . and he was growling and so forth. But I would prefer avoiding that dog than I would all those people -- because I knew what they wanted to do to me.

He paused, seeing it all again.



"This happened," Dunn said. "I am telling you exactly. It did happen."

Now he was a young officer, stationed down in Alabama. These were the earliest days of the civil rights movement and the state was ferociously determined to resist the integration that had been forced on the military. His fellow soldiers for the most part treated him with little respect, refusing to follow such common-sense commands as stop playing with live ammo.

But his oldest daughter -- Dora, now 55 and listening from the kitchen -- had it even harder, he said. She was the only black in her high school.

The teachers were the worst ones, against any integration. They jumped on her. The instructors would get up and start teaching this thing about the black people were happiest when they were slaves because slave owners took good care of them. Of course, she immediately would call the teachers: "That's not right."

"Well, how dare you!"

So she'd be sent out of the class. Each night that she came home she wanted to stop, to find someplace else. And I would spend each night talking to her, talking about "how important it is for you to continue what you are doing. You are the first black person to be down there, but you certainly won't be the last. And you have got to be strong."

And sometimes I regret doing that now because she was so young. But I told her that "regardless of what the situation, you have got to do it -- for us, for black people in general, you have just got to do it. You cannot let them win."


And now, he was in Kinston again, learning the family story from his preacher father and his mother, who made sure all nine of her children finished high school, with six of them scraping their way through college. He had been told, for instance, about a great-grandmother who, daughter of a slave, had inherited enough of a master's blood to look white -- but still was treated as a black. Dunn worked as a young waiter in a fine restaurant, because being served by meek-mannered blacks was perceived by whites as a status symbol, a remnant of antebellum privilege. Then he found work as a bellhop at Kinston's hotel. This was during World War II and the hotel was filled mostly with hard-drinking Marines.

I remember once they were half-drunk, over at the sixth floor of the hotel. And to scare me they grabbed me by the legs and put me out the window. And they were threatening, "Should we throw him out or pull him in?" And they didn't, and don't think they intended to. But they could easily have dropped me because they were drinking and so forth.

But it was the type of thing that they would do at the time. And that was something you had to learn to put up with. When they pulled me back in they gave me a big tip and all that. But you know, you still say, Well, maybe one of these days I'll be beyond this.

And then he was in Vietnam, dangling from an airplane, this time as a matter of duty -- looking for jungle to defoliate and deprive the enemy of cover. He went on to serve in the Pentagon, vetting regulation reports. He built a second career with the Urban League. He outlived his siblings.

Dunn -- along with his wife, Faye, who sat in another room as he told his stories -- raised four daughters and a son, teaching them to not see skin color and to resist any impulse for hatred. Dunn watched a lot of history together with his daughter Dora. She remembered how he had screamed in anger at the television in 1957 when a black girl trying to attend school was spit upon, and how he shouted in exultation as Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I have a dream" speech.

But there was no shouting this year as election night coverage reached its historical climax. A quiet fell over the room. Dunn had watched every campaign moment through the primaries, rooting for Obama, and now he felt as he often did after hearing a particular piece of classical music, Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8.

"It is almost as though I am on air," Dunn said, straining to explain the out-of-body reverie. "Mahler affects me that way. And I felt the same when I got the announcement that Obama had won. . . . I don't know what I was thinking, but I felt that I was off the ground.



" 'I am there,' " he remembered telling himself. "I am there. And I have witnessed this."

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All hearts of Hope
have the intention of the human hand working miracles in them.

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