Laila Ibrahim, Author
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What am I? Off-white.

1/13/2016

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I’ve been asked this question for as long as I can remember: What are you? Before I understood its implications, I learned to answer it: My father is from Egypt;  my mother  of French-Canadian and Irish descent was raised in Indiana. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I realized most people aren’t asked that particular question when they first meet someone. The fact that I don’t fit into any of the neat racial and cultural categories is apparently written all over my face.

As an adult I’ve been asked how I identify racially, and after years of thought I’ve settled on replying off white, which usually gets a chuckle.  It is funny.  And it also feels like the truest answer. I’m grateful to have found it.  Off white contains the reality that my mother was white and my father wasn’t; my mother had white privilege and my father did not.  

I’m still not sure what all the implications are for my mixed heritage, but I believe it gave me a worldview that seems to be shared by other people who live between cultures in some way or another.  I’m grateful for the ways it forced me, starting from a young age, to see things from different viewpoints. Perspective taking  continues to be welcome challenge and joy in my life.

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Love and Justice with Joy and Ease

1/8/2016

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My faith calls me to be an agent for love and justice in the world.  With so much need for both of them  I’m easily overwhelmed.  Increasing love and justice for me, my loved ones, and total strangers is a daunting task. It’s hard to mark and measure. So I’ve decided to make myself a chart to note some of the times when I’m living out my values.  When I think about it I imagine that in some areas I  do them nearly every day but I rarely give myself credit—and I’m sure I miss the boat entirely in others.  This chart will be a way to give myself credit for overlooked acts, while inspiring me to live out my values in other more difficult areas. For example  I’ve never even thought about how to increase justice for myself before!

I’ll give this tool a try to see if it brings me more joy and ease 
as I work to be an agent for love and justice in 2016.

Here an example of the chart with goals for this month:
Picture
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    Laila Ibrahim is a passionate author set out to write stories of love's ability to transcend human-made systems of oppression.

     Living Right goes beyond the headlines to reveal the life and death stakes when a devoted mother struggles to reconcile her evangelical Christian beliefs with her son’s sexual orientation.

    Set in the antebellum South, Yellow Crocus is a rich, evocative tale of love, loss and redemption between an enslaved black woman, her privileged white charge, and their fight for freedom.

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