Dinner

Last night, I went to a fellowship Dinner with some local youth activists. It was a great meal and a great night. The folks are part of the younglife family.
I got to eat some great Tongan food, hang out with some people I knew, met some new folks, and enjoy a cool conversation.

I do it for the kids

I've just spent the last two weekends in the presence of some really brilliant people. Most of them were under the age of 20. You know how you just do some things and then when you finish, you realize that you've grown? Well that's what this past weekend and the weekend before last were like.
I won't even get into it here, it's too big for me to process just yet. But I will tell you this; I am doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing with my life. This weekend was the proof. That is not to say that I don't have big improvements to make or that I have all my shit together.
But I will say this, I know that I am living my purpose.

Some Highlights:

Having my daughter there with me.
Two of the kids playing a totally impromptu tribute one on drums and the other on the piano to a departed elder Baba Sakisa Thompson.
At the end of camp, during their final proposals-having my kids proposal for 2.2 million dollars funded by the mock City Council. They had the smallest commission with only two people.

The possibility walks.
Reuniting with my friend Muriithi Alafia, after years and years of just talking on the phone.
I will revisit all this, I just need some time to get it all straight in my head.

God Bless the kids.

Manhood aint easy

just like pimpin ain't easy, neither is being a man, but being a boy is. You don't have to do shit, everyone understands when you don't quite make it. No one expects that boy to be able to come up with money for emergencies that are not his when he's broke. No one expects that boy to take on responsibilities for things and people that he did not create.
As a man though, I take on these challenges enthusiastically. I will not accept failure from myself. There are no excuses. I find myself a new person in the same skin.
I am much happier than I have been in a long time.

Life is not easy, but it is good.

Honor

Money.Power.Respect. That's the key to life.
Or so says Lil Kim. I disagree. At least those are not the keys to mine. Certainly they are important, but not the only or most important things. The problem is that too many people think that way. Where do honor, faith, love and loyalty fit in? I have been working with kids for a while now, long enough to feel like a seasoned veteran, but not long enough to feel like I know what's going on all the time. Who is teaching our kids to be honorable, faithful, loving and loyal? I have always believed in honor, and it is one of my core values. I've had some lapses, certainly, but I believe there is a lot to be said for living a life where money is not placed at the center of life.
To be honorable is to be trustworthy, a person who will "walk the talk." To be honorable is to be a person who will do the right thing, even when no one is looking or no one is there to congratulate you. I am very concerned that in this materialist, self centered, godless culture that we live in, that this value is not being transmitted to our kids.

I was going to write more, but really there's not much more to say.
Love,
M

2moro is not promised

Mpozi died. He was one of my childhood friends. We weren't super close, I emailed him recently, and he never emailed me back, I don't think he even remembered me. He lived down the street from my cousins. We were about the same age, but even we were little kids, Mpozi was beyond us. He was one of those kids who was just "good." never got in trouble, never started any mess. He was real sensitive too, I remember he had big ole glasses and when he got teased, he would just say something like "I need them to see" and look at the person like "why would you tease me about that?" Everyone liked Mpozi, and everyone seemed to know him. He was a good brother. Ima miss him alot, even though I haven't seen him or talked to him in years. I've been following his career and I tell you, he was a genius in everything he did.

His dad, I remember was really into being conscious. He has a brother named Paul Robeson. Mpozi was a brilliant photographer, and I mean brilliant. His photos captured a lot more than what he was aiming at or what came out on the paper. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
info
Live on in the stars Mpozi. Live on.

Church

I went to church again this Sunday. Two Sundays in a row. It's a nice church, Abundant Life Christian Fellowship. It's led by Pastor Paul, who studied under one of the very few pastors that I have ever trusted and loved in my life, Bishop Milton C. Grannum. It's a big church, too and very diverse, Asians, Blacks, White people, Latinos, Polynesians, everybody. The first Sunday I went, an Indian guy gave the sermon.
They even have cool childcare. Laila was tired and grumpy, so I took her out and walked around. We ended up at the childcare center, it was full of happy kids and Laila jumped right in. I didn't go back to the service, I just watched her play.
Church, for me is a place to be around other people who believe as I do, but it isn't a place that I go to find God or answers or anything, really other than community. My experiences with God and prayer are the foundations of my faith. It seems a little sacreligious but really I would believe in God, even if I hadn't ever read a Bible.
The church used to be where I went to find God and Answers, but I've found that He is always around and the answers more often than not, just need to be waited on. My problem is that I am short on patience.
I am learning, the hard way it seems, to be patient.

I saw Superman

it was dumb. That dude was playing Christopher Reeve playing Superman. I don't know about you all, but I didn't go to see someone channel Christopher Reeve, who I always thought was a corny Superman anyway. And the movie was poorly written.
I was dissapointed and I would've gone to get my money back, but I had free passes.


Like my crooked glasses?
I couldn't care less really. I am so much happier with myself than I was when I was in my 20's.


Life is good.
-M

I do not celebrate Fraud and the Lie

I do not love America.

I do not tear up at the sight of the red white and blue. Fireworks on the fourth of july, just remind of me of wars of aggression against foreign people. Independence day is a farce because my people were in no way free. On thanksgiving I say prayers for the blood of the indigenous slain and dispossessed.
The Pledge of Allegiance is like acid in my mouth. I will not speak lies about this country. I will not speak lies about this country. I will not believe this countries lies.
I cannot rationalize the Westward expansion or the growth of industrial capitalism, nor can I comprehend the human feelings behind rationalizing the slave trade. No amount of strangeness or animosity could make me think what happened to us was in any way okay. I think that if I were white and linked in any way to the oppression of indigenous or African people, I would not be able to live a quiet life.
Some people say “Well it is a whole lot better here than any other place.” I don’t bother to argue, but I do wonder how many of the people that say that have ever lived any other place. And what makes it better? Is it the cable television? Is it the shopping? Is it the “freedoms”? Or is it just the fact that if I can manage to secure a place in the Middle Class, that I can get enough stuff to insulate me from the things that make me feel uncomfortable? I can get a job that will take me from in front of the kids who grew up in tabloid television homes. I can move into a neighborhood where there are not as many homeless people. I can eat Japanese, or Chinese or Indian or Soul food, any time I want. I can consume a whole lot more than I can in other places. I can send my son to a school where I can be reasonably certain that he is going to get a basically sound education. Are these the things that make America “better?” I have heard a lot of people say that it is the diversity of the people here in the US, this is one of the things that makes America great. Most places where I go, there are still a majority of white people just outside the door of that place, so that to me doesn’t count. A little pocket here and there, a few belts of cosmopolitan behavior, which does not matter to me. None of these things make me feel in my heart that America is the best place for me.
What would make me love America is if I felt like America loved me. If America really valued me and people like me. If I felt like America wasn’t super eager to throw my sons' precious life in front of some bullets, if America showed me in some real substantive way that I was a valuable citizen. That what I said mattered, that the issues of my community were American issues, and then I would maybe begin to love America.
Instead America has never loved me, she has always, always, always treated me and others like me, as if we didn’t matter, like what we have to say is not that not that important. I am forever “special interest” America has loved my labor, my music, my food, my body, my blood, but she has never loved me. She has never loved me enough to say that she was sorry for hurting me, for abusing my children, for treating us, my special interest group, like we were beneath the regard of the rest of her “regular” citizens.No, America has never loved me, never respected me, never treated me well at all. She has always treated me like shit, has always turned a deaf ear to my pleas and when I did love her, she didn’t love me back.