Launch of the Freedom Series

Happy July 4th! To celebrate the day, I'm jump-starting a project I've been working on called the "Freedom Series." In this category of the blog, people are highlighted who live the Inner Constellation life--knowing they are celestial, boundless and an entire universe. To say it simply--they live free. Their identity is beyond circumstance, place or condition. Folks from the past and present age will be featured. With the uprisings over in the East right now, there are so many I.C. Freedom Series peeps it makes my head spin with possibilities! Did you guys hear about the pistol-packing granny over in India? I just heard her story this morning. Don't get your panties in a bunch, she's not putting slugs into people but into oppressive ideals. Firstly, I'd like to celebrate a woman named Iman al-Obeidi. Perhaps you heard of her? The prose below was written end of March 2011, a few evenings after her story had crossed the boundaries of sea and sand and had entered the consciences of people everywhere:

Faith’s Reality
©Karla Johnston, InnerConstellation.com

Iman al-Obeidi—
“faith” in Arabic, her language.

March, 26, 2011, Iman enters a lively swarm:
journalists, countrymen, government officials.
Faith cries out, demanding her story of rape and captivity be heard—
She is a lawyer, you see, in a land with laws just beginning to change.
Weapons pulled, insults shouted, black coat thrown over Iman’s bruised face,
attempting to silence
what cannot be silenced.

I sit on my couch, in God’s blessed America, heart pounding,
taking in a vile scene Libyan countrymen have witnessed for their life’s eternity.
Seeing this is a first for me, a first: woman silenced, bound and whisked away.
I go to bed in dark eve, voicing “freedom”, over and over,
dreaming it,
setting it
like a jewel in night sky.

I wake and exercise Iman’s reality:
speak tenderly, lovingly.
Is it not the most I can do?
Treat others with decency, dignity.
I am blessed to live in circumstance
where my voice has no reason to fear
forcible silence. 

In the eves since faith’s captivity,
I step off into the night
and hold North Star as my guiding light,
wake and shine—
strengthening Iman’s reality. 

(After over 2 months of forcible "house-arrest", Iman was granted political asylum in the U.S. and flown to safety. I find myself wondering how Iman is spending her first 4th of July in a free country.)