The Calling

Video version of me explaining my calling:

My name is Mandelyn Reese, The LA Street Angel. Maybe you haven't heard of why I am wandering around Los Angeles and other cities in an angel outfit. I can say it's attributed to a "calling" that one can only fully understand when they have experienced one also. But I will do my best to describe mine to you.

I moved to Los Angeles from San Antonio, TX back at the end of June 2012 to be with a boyfriend (that I ended up breaking up with pretty early on). On my second day living here, I went to an outdoor sandwich shop in Marina Del Rey with my friend Claire, whom I've known since kindergarten. Claire had flown in with me to hang out for my first week here. As we were sitting outside, eating our sandwiches on the nice patio amongst many patrons quietly interacting, I began to feed the birds with my sandwich crumbs. As I fed the birds, other people began to notice what I was doing, and began to participate. A business man, who was wearing what appeared to be designer snakeskin white shoes, got up, went to get some bread, came back to his bench, and began to happily feed the birds too. Then a woman and her child came to join in: the little girl began running around happily amongst the birds and we all were chatting peacefully. My friend Claire looked at me with a certain curiosity and said to me, "Mandy, you have a ripple effect on people."

Claire and I cruising on the 405 in her rental car the first week I lived here :)

After we drove away from the sandwich shop, I remember The Calling just hit me like a bolt of lightening, and I suddenly blurted out to Claire that I felt like I was supposed to be out on the streets with posters about kindness. She looked at me like I was nuts. It was priceless. We casually discussed it as she drove, but it wasn't until after she flew back to Texas, that I really began diving into that calling. It was like I had downloaded what I was supposed to start doing. I developed the idea to dress in white like an angel because most people would recognize that outfit as a messenger of peace. Ironically, I got this calling upon moving to the City of Angels. In case you didn't know, here is a little trivia for you: The city name Los Angeles means "The Angels" in Spanish. However, the city's original full name was "La Ciudad de la Reina de los Angeles" which means "City of the Queen of the Angels".

I began ordering wings and outfits online and preparing my posters. I had no idea what was going to happen or how people would respond to me, but I took the leap of faith and acted on my calling one day: August 17th, 2012. On that day, I walked out to a random intersection near my apartment in West LA in my angel outfit, in full view of a busy Starbucks with an outdoor patio full of people, and stood there trembling. I was new to the area, had no friends, and was debating whether or not I was crazy for what I was doing. But it was a calling that hit me so hard, beyond space and time, that I couldn't deny or ignore.

One of the pictures taken on my first day doing the Angel Project

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I would like to share with you a great analogy that I've taken from one of my favorite movies, "Angus", that is one way of looking at my plan and what I'm doing with the Angel Project:

Angus: "I'm trying to prove that within every normal system, there exists an aboration. Something different. When a small, abnormal element is forced into a larger, normal system, the element will either be rejected, or destroyed. But it doesn't have to be that way! If the element is BRAVE; If the element can hold out long enough, and face the torment of the system until the system's energy is depleted; If the element can look the system in the eye and say, "I'M STILL HERE A$$HOLE!", then the system with HAVE to change, adapt, mutate. And if this happens, then it will prove my f**king point!: There is no normal."

                                             
Climatic Scene about "Being Normal": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OwVEQ3GmvQ

~~So how that paragraph applies to my Angel Project is that I am a small, abnormal element, who sees that change is needed in the world, and I want to be brave and take a stand. I want to do my best to infiltrate this jacked up system with messages about matters of the heart and mind amongst this world's citizens.

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Another great movie quote I'd like to share is from a movie called "The Faculty", in which a small town school is taken over by aliens in an attempt to take over the world. The quote is this: "If you wanted to take over the world, would you take out the White House, Independence Day style, or sneak in the back door?" (Independence Day is another movie about aliens blowing up the white house and trying to take over the world).

                                                   

~~How this applies to my Angel Project is that I want to help effect the everyday people, even if just one person at a time, because getting people re-connected and being kind and helpful to each other again is where change has to start. Basically, I'm planting the seeds of goodness into each individual who is exposed to the simple, universal messages of love, kindness, peace, happiness etc... And that relates to my final quote for this passage:

“If there is to be peace in the world,

There must be peace in the nations.

If there is to be peace in the nations,

There must be peace in the cities.

If there is to be peace in the cities,

There must be peace between neighbors.

If there is to be peace between neighbors,

There must be peace in the home.

If there is to be peace in the home,

There must be peace in the heart.”

― Lao Tzu

Namaste,

~Mandelyn Reese

5/4/13