Bebe Anderson Hennessy

08/04/2016

7-minute Testimonial on the Constitution for:
The Graduation Banquet of The Institution on the Constitution
Monday, July 18, 2016
By Bebe Anderson Hennessy

Importance of the Constitution:

A True Story-but one that I ask your support to take an imaginative journey with me so that you too may have an opportunity to experience this true story. This story should only take a minute of your time.

Please stand, please put your cell phones safely away, out of reach for the moment, and now while the story is related to you, please listen carefully and please close your eyes:
It is now 1984, you are arriving Cairo airport in Egypt-the Arab Republic of Egypt—your plane lands, you deplane by the cockpit door descending step by step down on to the tarmac. It is 125 dry but blazing degrees, you are standing in the burning sun, and you look back to the rest of this group descending the plane. You give a welcoming wave to your group, just then a sharp voice says” Get on the Bus” standing only a few feet away are 2 armed militia holding M 14’s, raised up. Not smiling. Stunned by the sudden demand, you hear a voice from your party—Urging you fast- “Get on the damn bus”!
While on the bus, heading into Cairo, the loud speaker announces –bluntly- “You are now in the hands of the Sovereign State of Egypt”. You pass by Egyptian prisons- Huge Iron Gate with cities of pup tents, going for miles, and miles. You cannot see the end of the tents.
Once in the Sheraton Hotel, the atmosphere seems pretty friendly, and then your tour guide turns to you and says, “Give me your Passport. The hotel will be keeping your passports for you.”
NOW---How do you feel? You have No cell phone, no passport- now stripped of your US Citizenship identification? Stripped of The Authority that states…. “To permit the citizen/national of the US named herein to pass without delay or hindrance and in the case of need to give all lawful aid and protection.”
Take a moment-how does this feel? And now how do you feel with the broader question ----without the Constitutional authority of Your Passport?
You may open your eyes and be seated!
That’s right ---your entire identification as a US citizen in this example just didn’t happen—it happens because you have a Passport that identifies you as an American. But hold on---where did the Passport which belongs to the US Government—page 6—by the way—where did the Passport get the authority to identify YOU-Yes, the Constitution, Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1.

Little do we think or even recognize the immense impact the Constitution has in our daily lives, this example is only one, others may be while we drive a car, cross state lines, hear opposing speech. What gives us these rights?
I, thank our teachers, Carol Phillips and Mary Desautels, who took up the task to drive home the significance of these rights, the importance of how the Constitution was formed and what it really means to us----took the time to impart how from the Declaration of Independence, of July 4, 1776, 240 years later, to insist on what these documents truly mean. Documents supported by attorneys, ministers, principles of the Bible and of Christianity, great thinkers of the day such as Baron Charles Montesquieu, Sir William Blackstone, John Locke, whose convictions of Spirit, Law, and Human Understanding poured into the framing of these precious documents.
So just how did the Constitution come about?
Years, 11 years, from the Declaration of Independence til the first draft of the Constitution was completed and made public on September 17, 1787! It didn’t just float down from above, years followed after July 4! “Infuriated and hostile mobs” ---still loyal to the King of England—“pillaged and burned the homes” of many of the 56 signers. ‘Their lives, reputations, and estates were cast upon the waters of chance” to pursue this mighty undertaking. Then---WAR. Seven years the battle waged with England and Loyalists to the King, battles that took men from their fields, businesses and professions, to quickly learn to fight- with leaders such as Major General Nathaniel Green, Brigadier General Daniel Morgan and Lt. General Swamp Fox Marion—supporting Washington, with little to no pay, scant food, and scarcely shirts to none---on their backs, to finally win the battles of Kings Mountain, where the mountain men helped to fight, then close by, Cowpens, SC on January 17, 1781 turning away” the Butcher” who had literally carved up captured Revolutionary soldiers who had surrendered in battle, this Banastre Tarleton of England, sending him running to Yorktown, where the ships of Marquis de Lafayette gave tremendous support to Washington successfully, defeating Cornwallis, in what is known as the Siege of Yorktown-why? Because it, began September 28 lasting til October 19 of 1781. A final turning point for Independence, then more War til September 3, 1783. Seven long years of WAR. Four more years to begin work in April, 1787 bringing the 13 detached colonies together, all wanting their colonies to come out on top, to bring all of this together, with no money, loaded with war debt, and to carve out the Constitution taking up the Articles of Confederation, There in Philadelphia, the Convention was held in Independence Hall, the same room that 11 years prior the Declaration was signed---here the Colonies came and then worked and worked until September to deliver the Constitution.
Today, the Constitution remains ---but remains under siege and under great challenge. Evil assaults both against its ideals and on the streets. Daily, Hourly, just check out the horrible recent events.
So what can you do? Speak, pray –pray hard, engage, and stand up for your Constitutional freedoms.

Soon, You must choose, You for whom the Constitution was written—aren’t we “We the People”? In four months, to vote for the President of your choice. When you do, I urge you to think--- not about the stuff, or what sounds good and comfy and cozy-think about your Constitutional rights, the rights to your free speech, to speak up, your right to vote, your protection of your free speech, your way of life, your Constitutional right to protect yourself and your property---
Think! Think! What candidate best supports your Constitutional rights, that came to you literally, in real time--- by tremendous amounts of painful Blood, Sweat and Tears! Just remember what stands behind your Passport---The Constitution!

References and Resources:
The United States Constitution of America.
US Passport, issued 2006.
Cowpens National Battlefield information administered by the National Park Service, United States Department of the Interior.
The internet.
Certain quotations and resource material from America’s Invisible Guidance, Corinne Heline, pages in particular 60-73.

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FINDING THE LIGHT
By: Emma Kennedy

Faith means something different to everyone, but to Bebe Hennessy it means a gentle, loving hug at a time she didn’t even know she needed it most. Hennessy didn’t want to go to a presentation in June this year, but a push from an acquaintance got her through the doors and before Faith, a speaker at the event. Faith is charismatic, she’s kind and warm, and is the kind of person you’d want to meet. And, as it turned out, she’s the kind of person that once you do meet her, you’re changed forever.

“The experience with her was most extraordinary... it was just a gentle hello with a little hug and for two days I couldn’t sleep. The woman has some sort of gift that I guess did something to me,” Hennessy recounted. Following that somewhat chance meeting, Hennessy’s idea of the virtue of faith changed, and she began having conscious realizations relating to everything from where to hang a picture frame to the future of the stock market.

The first instance was an innocuous feeling to perhaps invest in a certain stock, which she relayed to MBA Todd Colbeck, an old friend and coach consultant for many years. “She just came out and told me ‘I want to buy something that will go up when the market goes down’ and this was two weeks before a market implosion, (that investment) must’ve gone from $1 to $20 or $30 in a short period of time,” Colbeck said. With Todd’s help, they aced the pick. And that wasn’t the only realization Hennessy had.

When the feeling came over her that something bad was going to
happen – a feeling nobody wants to have –she knew she had to act, even if she didn’t know exactly what was going to happen. She shared a link on her page, which Todd has largely single handed maintained, about preparing for disasters, recommending stockpiles of first aid supplies and fresh water, not knowing that only days later her home state of South Carolina would be ravaged by floods in a 1,000-year rain, costing lives and property in the process.

Hennessy has a background in finance, with almost 30 years clocked up with Ameriprise Financial as an advisor, so the switch to having these spiritual and unexplained experiences was quite an adjustment for a once black-and-white numbers type of person. “I feel as if something obviously happened in consciousness,” she said. “It was just a feeling and it was so exhilarating in a quiet, beautiful, simple way I couldn’t sleep for two days. We used to use this description... it felt like your left ear was hanging out, in other words you felt tilted off balance a little bit, like walking around and needing something to change but I didn’t know what and I didn’t know how.”

Since then, without any conscious search, Hennessy has seen the concept of faith pop up again and again in life since that meeting in June, as though the concept has chosen her rather than the other way around. A South African-born minister referred to as ‘The Prophet’ gave a talk in a modern-day church Hennessy attended, and while inside her head the idea of faith was reeling and she was trying to understand the changes she’d experienced since meeting Faith, the speaker began to talk about just that topic – faith. “It seems to have opened up a continuum where there’s more about this topic of faith, and then that’s interesting to me because it’s never been one of my big (focuses),”Hennessy said. “One needs to understand the phenomenon of faith and what I’m beginning to sense is that most people’s idea of what the word means probably isn’t what the word actually means. Without my willing nature of me
deciding this is the next step, it’s as if these steps are being put in front of me and I have the choice to take them or not.”

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