Blurbs From Eunee's Mind (and Life)

Do you remember how to skip? And when was the last time you went skipping down the street? Skipping down our driveway this morning, I just realized that as an adult it might be a silly thing to do, but it instantly returned me to feeling like a 4 year old little girl who had just discovered how to skip. It was an immediate return to childhood and immediately brought a smile to my face. I must admit that there have been days when I've been out in public and had to fight the urge to skip across the street. What is it about adults that place the actual task of skipping into the dark recesses of our mind, never to be brought out into the open again? Perhaps it doesn't serve a function for us anymore. Walking, running, tiptoeing, jumping all are skills we still continue to use; what is it about skipping that gets excluded from the motorical activities of an adult? I don't know about you but I want to skip more often than once or twice a year; and when I have kids, you can be sur...

Today is a Day for Darfur. Around the world, thousands have been gathering to call for international action to stop the violence in Darfur. Gatherings include vigils, prayer meetings, and rallies - such as one in New York City today. The international community's response was slow, if not practically non-existent, to the genocide in Rwanda. It cannot happen again. I sincerely hope today that the response, slow as it is, will not be the same as it was in 1994. We are faced with the same situation, but I hope that the outcome will be a different one. Join in the vigil, raise your awareness, and the awareness of those around you. Be a voice for Darfur today.

In the arena of human rights, Africa should be center stage. Not to minimize any of the other human rights situations going on at the moment, but do we as a collective society here in America really know what's going on in Africa? Our news is filled with politics, with Iraq, with Iran, with Afghanistan, and granted that those are important to us, what of the continent of Africa? Darfur.... I never knew where Darfur was until less than a year ago. And the conflict and genocide? It has been going on since February of 2003. I ask my friends, my colleagues, my peers, and most of them have no idea where Darfur is or that there is a conflict there, let alone an escalating genocide. I don't blame them. It's not like I was that aware of it, even though I have close ties to Africa - being born there and raised there for 11 years before moving. To learn more about Darfur, click here . Apparently there are thousands of people who are aware of these events and have put together a coali...

Anniversaries.... I don't know if that's the right word for the two events because usually those are filled with joyous celebration. Or perhaps it is the right word, in the sense that you can look back at all the hard times and see how they built you to bring you this far. So I take that back. I'll have to ponder that a bit more. In any event, one anniversary just passed - one year after Hurricane Katrina and the devastation it caused; and one anniversary comes upon us - five years after the horrific event in NYC. Events that we could not and would not ever forget. Each event is covered in politically-stained shrouds, but to me, the heart of the issue is humanity, or more specifically, lives lost and strength gained. Those who weren't able to make it out, and those who didn't come out because they went back in to rescue others...and those who live each day in determination, with strength, to remember this event, to carry the memory of brave souls in their hearts, an...

  One of my favorite places and favorite memories of Lebanon - from last summer. 

I once read this article that Anderson Cooper wrote about how parents still hold power over us no matter how old we get. I really enjoyed it because he so adeptly captured it all. I laughed and nodded while reading this. And then I wondered how he could do that? I mean, he comes from a wealthy family, wealthy and Caucasian. (If you don't know about Anderson Cooper, do a Google search on him. He has a show on CNN.) Yet surprisingly, we could relate to what he was saying - we meaning my 2nd generation Korean-American friends and myself with working class parents. And here I am, at age 30, still experiencing those parental controls that I thought I could throw off after my 20s. Apparently, that's just a myth. Sometimes it's just terrible - of me, really, not my parents. No matter how my parents try to let go of controls, I guess as long as I'm their daughter those controls will always be there, attached by invisible strings that get yanked once in a while. I, on the other ...

I wonder what it was like for Abraham to heed God's calling to leave everything he knew and go somewhere else - a foreign land and a foreign situation. Basically, he was going from the known to the unknown. He was settled, married, and probably comfortable where he was. But on a promise from God, he uprooted himself and his wife and left. He didn't know where, or why, but he went. All he had to go on was God's promise that he would have descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. I'm sorry, but does that sound like logic to you? Say what? He was old, had no kids, and a vague message from God. But he went.... That's what I call faith - faith in God himself. Forget about common sense. Logic? Out the window. This is what faith looks like. This is what dreams are made of. This is the miracle that God brings about. You know, I can't help but think of Abraham because his situation seems like mine, only amplified several thousand times. And still, I'm not sure...