dj Derek's Heavenly rave Playlist Day 1687/LA Lockdown Diaries Day 1787/(image: hanging out with my adopted niece Chloe after a Vineyard church service last fall)/1230 pm "The Power of Prayer/aka: Radical Empathy": David 'Foster' Wallace once delivered a truly transcendent commencement address at Claremont College about radical empathy which was entitled "This is Water?"...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI ...Well I drove out to Claremont High School today for what was scheduled to be a Manifestation Determination Meeting followed by an Expulsion Hearing for an 18 year old foster kid that I'm the educational rights holder for (aka: parent, as far as today's meeting/hearing was concerned)...Fearing the worst, for, as David 'Foster' Wallace so eloquently reminded us in his unfinished novel 'The Pale King': "bureaucracy is the devil", & having danced with that devil in both the immigration & criminal justice contexts my entire adult life, I frantically emailed family & friends & texted 50 friends for prayer on my way there, 1 of whom, Marisol Ibanez-Tintorer, who leads Aim4theHeart's weekly urban poetry workshops in Long Beach, is a trauma-informed school counselor, & so she texted me back all the questions I needed to ask at the meeting/hearing. Once I arrived, however, & was escorted over to the meeting by the vice principal & was introduced to my wonderful foster kid (aka: my adopted nephew) & met his chauffeur from the group home (aka: his adopted mom) & therapist from the group home (his adopted sister), I immediately felt a peace that, as another dear friend had texted me, the path would appear. And while I had no idea what I was gonna say, the Holy Spirit gave me the words, & by the end of the Manifestation Determination meeting everyone there agreed to show mercy, so the Expulsion hearing no longer needed to take place, & my adopted nephew will be back in school tomorrow. I witnessed the power of prayer in that meeting today, along with a radical empathy I never could have imagined possible from such a diverse group of people....to be continued...
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