[Dialogue] With Thanksgiving

[Sunny Walker]

Margaret,

You continue to be the most amazing story teller. Not to mention your deep
intuitive side.

 

Blessings - we've come a long way since those erstwhile days in the Tulsa
House.

 

Sunny

Sunny Walker

303-671-0704

Cell: 303-587-3017

 <mailto:sunwalker at comcast.net> sunwalker at comcast.net 

 

Opening windows that fresh ideas may revive us and our lives have meaning

  _____  

From: dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net
[mailto:dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Margaret Helen
Aiseayew
Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2008 2:08 PM
To: Colleague Dialogue
Subject: [Dialogue] With Thanksgiving

 

I first met Barack Obama in Bethlehem, Palestinian Territories. 

 

You heard me correctly.  This was on the trip to Israel with my dad that I
have already told you all about.  We had just gone through four rings of
security to meet a Palesinian Christian guide in the plaza outside the
Church of the Nativity.  The guide had just explained that the walls were
between ten and fourteen feet thick as they had been rebuilt by the
Christians with each crusade and by the Muslims with each interval.

 

Suddenly five black, bullet-proofed vehicles came racing into the square and
screeched to a halt just a few feet away.  Our guide was in a panic.  He
kept saying that this must be a very important person and was trying to get
us to melt into the wall he had just said was fourteen feet thick.  I
naturally watched as people jumped out of the first and last vehicles
(Mossad and CIA) and only noticed by following their glances the sharp
shooters on the surrounding roofs.  More people jumped out of the second and
fourth vehicles (FBI and Palestinian security).  Finally a woman was allowed
out of the second vehicle to go open the door of the middle one and out
stepped Barack Obama.  He was walking (relaxed, he has a rather delightful
lope that you could catch glimpses of during campaign events as he ran up
stairs) toward the church encircled by all these machine gun toting guarding
types.

 

I just walked into their circle and said, "Barack Obama, I would like to
shake your hand."

He came over and visited with the group and as we ran into him around
Jerusalem the next couple of days he referred to us as his "Iowa friends."
No one else in the group had known who he was.  They were fascinated that I
recognized a junior Senator from another state.  When they asked me who he
was I simply said that he was going to be the first black President of the
United States.

 

He went into the church ahead of us.  The lintel is solid stone about five
feet wide and the door was not quite five feet high.  You had to step in the
middle of the stone to get across at the same time you were bending down.  I
watched him make that move ahead of me in the midst of the security with
such humility and grace I knew I had not spoken falsely to the group.  Only
later in Jerusalem trying to explain all this to our Jewish guide who had
not been able to travel into Palestine with us did she mention that entrance
is often referred to as the eye of the needle (as in, it would be easier for
a camel to go through the eye of a needle than. . .).  It seemed
appropriate.  

 

Although I have told the story of meeting him there many times, I have
hoarded until now the image of the eye of the needle.  I have prayed over it
intensely.  It allowed me all forms of permission knocking on doors, making
phone calls, advertising from my yard and being abused for it.  I am
probably laying myself open to accusations of magical thinking, but there is
curse and a gift in knowing what you know.  When he won the Iowa caucuses
there was a certainty that settled on me about both the difficulty
(instigating repetitive doubt) and the result.  Now it is our turn to follow
through --rather like a national rebirthing process,  I pray we won't lose
courage.

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