Keep On Keeping On

#381

Keep on Keeping On

One of my mother's sisters, a very wonderful aunt, never let me forget the first time she saw me speak in public. She said I was about four, dressed in a white suit with a red bow tie, and at a large county-wide Sunday school convention, I gave the poem, “Keep On Keeping On”.

The sense of this poem has served me well as a totally blind, 100% disabled, service connected veteran of the Korean War. I had to think back many times to the disabled people I have known in my life. One very wonderful school teacher, only had four fingers on each hand but the sweet music she brought forth out of a piano, even though she had to contrive every selection to fit her disability, was truly remarkable. The normal hand can reach a complete octave. Her ability to play the piano, and do all her other duties as a teacher, was a gift. Another man who had lost his legs in WWI, had contrived a bicycle type cart affair which he could operate with handles and could move himself from his house on the edge of town, uptown, so he could sell candy and pencils on the street. Remember, this was the time before social security disability and when disabled veterans, very much as today, were left to fend for themselves. Another lady, well known in the town of Pikeville, NC, born with mangled feet (she was a patient of mine) spent her entire life walking on her knees. You would see her in town, her dress shortened just above the knee, she wore knee pads, proper and prim with her hat and her purse, shopping. Her stocking feet out the back. There are many others. With the scientific progress of vaccinations, we have more people with autism, attention deficit disorder, cancer and every other type autoimmune debilitation than ever before.

I have little patience with healthy people who crawl underneath the tent of disadvantaged disability. Sure, the playing field is not level; many of us come from disadvantaged homes. Look in the mirror and see the person responsible for your future.

I was in the holy city of Benaris, India. I had been out on a boat in the holy Ganges,the holy river of the Hindus, where there were cremations going on along the banks as the people were in the water doing their religious rituals. Getting off the boat, I felt something hanging onto my legs. Blind, I could not see what it was and I asked my guide, “What is hanging onto me?” He said, “These are the begging children. Their legs have been chopped off by enslavers and they are professional beggars.” The same thing happens in the Philippines where the feet are burned off the children. Those of you who like the loud sound of drums and drummer in your church, remember it is not new in religious rituals. Even in a valley in Israel, where the children were sacrificed to pagan gods, the loud beating of drums drowned out the cries of the children as they do in India and the Philippines, when God's chief creation, these innocent children, are defiled and disabled so that healthy people can take advantage.

I do not have a refrigerator in my house that would hold the money stolen from me when people have short changed me over the years. I have been worked over by so many stockbrokers that I have lost count. They all have the same mantra: We know how to make money for you. Just this past week, three bankers came in my house telling me that I am too disabled to handle my affairs, that they will just sell a large part of my estate and start over with their investment ideas so I can be cared for if I become more disabled. The politically correct, the ne'er do wells, those who have been dumbed down by the recent seasons of television ineptness, academic insolence, have forgotten that real men brought this world and country into it's maturity. Even in the Apostle's Creed, many in Church refuse to say “men” anymore, rather just give silence. Like marriage, the modernists and agnostics have tried to change the meaning of that word. Integrity is a forgotten word in most vocabularies. Character determines the destiny of a man and this is the reason that so many men are totally lost.

Rom 5:3 And not only [so], but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;
Rom 5:4 And patience, experience; and experience, hope:
Rom 5:5 And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.
Rom 5:6 For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.

Even if I were naïve enough not to believe in God, I would have to believe in a superior being who can bring justice to such a deceitful world. There has to be a balance at the other end of the see-saw. On this Veteran's Day, take a look at those who loved your country enough to defend it, particularly those who have suffered loss. On this Veteran's Day, think of the 126,000 who are buried on foreign soil.

I long for the purity of heaven, a place where there is no deceit, where there is no clamoring to satisfy Satan.

Keep On Keeping On
If the day looks kinder gloomy
And your chances kinder slim,
If the situation's puzzlin'
And the prospect's awful grim,
If perplexities keep pressin'
Till hope is nearly gone,
Just bristle up and grit your teeth
And keep on keepin' on.
Frettin' never wins a fight
And fumin' never pays;
There ain't no use in broodin'
In these pessimistic ways;
Smile just kinder cheerfully
Though hope is nearly gone,
And bristle up and grit your teeth
And keep on keepin' on.
There ain't no use in growlin'
And grumblin' all the time,
When music's ringin' everywhere
And everything's a rhyme.
Just keep on smilin' cheerfully
If hope is nearly gone,
And bristle up and grit your teeth
And keep on keepin' on.