I was surprised to learn about President Obama’s Nobel Peace prize award on Facebook this morning.

My first thought? “Wow! That’s cool!”

I didn’t give any thought to whether he deserved it or not.  “Cause see, I wasn’t on the committee.  My opinion didn’t count because I didn’t have a vote.

I wanted to hear his press conference even though I do all I can to avoid what passes for news these days.  I turned on MSNBC thinking I could tolerate it more than CNN.

I was wrong.

I was really shocked by the reaction and discussion.  Hmmm…this really deserves a discussion beyond “Hey the US President just won the Nobel Peace Prize”?

Can someone help me understand the need to spend ALL FREAKING DAY talking about what it means?

What it means, dumbass, is that President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  In December, he’ll go off to collect his award and get some money, make a speech and go on with the business of the day. No amount of talking, complaining, whining, bitching, moaning, agreeing or disagreeing changes the fact that he won the award.

Besides, today is Bo’s birthday. Get a grip.

Ok, Ok, I’m being my usual bitchy self.  But seriously, is anyone sitting around debating his worthiness around this actually more deserving?

If so, let me be the first to say, “Tough break.  Better luck next year.”

If not, let me say, “Shut the f*** up.”

(Damn…I was trying to be nice today.)

Perhaps I am naive, but I’m missing the point of this debate.

For the past 8 years, we as a country have held up both hands and flipped off the rest of the world.

We believed that 9/11 entitled us to do so.   To make sure everyone was on board with that, we were fed a daily diet of fear.  Out of that, as if programmed, we regurgitated what we heard on TV and even our pulpits.

“They hate us.”

“We have to defend our way of life.”

Muslims = TERRORISTS.

“If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists.”

“Remember 9/11.”

All of that gave us the “right” to invade a sovereign nation, detain 100s of people without charge, justify torture with the sorry-ass excuse, “I was just following orders”, spy on our own citizens and call the deaths of 1000s of  innocent civilians “collateral damage”. (Hey, they weren’t Americans and they didn’t matter anyway.)

So, this socialist, communist, Hitler-wanna-be, hatin’all white people President we have had the gall to stop flippin’ off the rest of the world and say, “let’s work together on these issues that affect us globally because we are ALL IN IT TOGETHER” and we don’t have anything better to do than to question whether or not he EARNED this award?

Wow.  And tell me again,what have YOU done to advocate peace in the world?

I think this so-called dialogue is yet another distraction.  We can rant and rave about how he has more pressure and how high the bar is set and on and on.

Or we can step back and say, “Hmm..today the world honored the US for a change in direction.  President Obama is simply a symbol of that change.  It is up to us as US citizens whether we will support him in continuing down the path of peace.  Is this the change I want to see in the world?”

What are you going to choose?

Fear.

Love.

Hate.

Peace.

Every day that choice is yours.

Today, the US President was awarded the Nobel Peace prize.

What are you going to do about it?

Yesterday was my birthday.  The outpouring of love was overwhelming and something I don’t take for granted.  Connection is really what my life’s work is about.  It’s the fuel that drives me.  I am grateful beyond words for the connections I’ve made in the last 43 years.

One connection that I have that I rarely celebrate is with one of my sisters.  We are adopted but biologically share the same father.  We were born 25 days apart in adjacent counties.  She was born to a married white woman who had several other children.  Me, to a 15 year old Mexican immigrant.  Dad clearly didn’t discriminate. 

No wonder I was a diversity professional.

Anyway, growing up, we were like “twins.”  But in our teenage years we took different paths and our lives couldn’t be any more different if we’d been born on different planets.

Friday, April 5, my 43 year old sister had a heart attack.

She is still in ICU, fighting for her life.  The prospect of losing her doesn’t make me sad.  I have said all I needed to say, long ago.  But for her, I want to share a funny story, that I hope energetically, will bring her some laughter and peace.

One day when I was about 3 or 4, , I asked my sister to come out to the garage with me and look in Daddy’s refrigerator.  He kept worms in there, so I was always afraid they’d jump out at me or something. She wasn’t afraid of worms, so having back-up was cool.

We found some ”grape juice” in there and sat down with these itty bitty glasses to drink some.  We didn’t want Daddy to know we’d been in there and we really just wanted a sip.

I don’t remember much after that until Mom came out.  She was ticked.  I was laughing my ass off and my sister was crying.  Mom demanded to know what we were doing, ’cause apparently, she’d been calling us for awhile. 

My sister, still crying, say’s, “Lisa made me have ‘munnion.”  

Yep, we had our own communion, but what we thought was grape juice was actually homemade wine!

We were stupid drunk, but all Mom could do was clean us up and put us to bed until we slept it off.    

As you can imagine, communion was never the same.

Every time we told that story, my sister would just laugh and laugh.  I hope she’s laughing now.

Leah, no matter what you decide, whether you choose to stay or join up with Mom and Dad, I love you.  And ‘munnion will be waiting for you, either way.

I encourage you to take a minute today and share a laugh with someone you love.  And say a prayer for my sister.  Thanks.

Love, Lisa