Get A Goat

Sophocles (c. 497 – 406 BC) perhaps one of the best known Greek philosophers and playwrights (123 plays written, 7 survived), reportedly left the Greek state of Athens and went to Egypt inquiring how the fabulous Egyptian culture had been established. The Egyptians want us to know the same thing from the Greeks. He was told that the surviving Egyptian culture was a remnant of the lost city of Atlantis. Sophocles told the Egyptians that at the time of the Great Flood, some Greek herdsman had survived along with their goats by clinging to the tops of Greek mountains. He said, “with a goat, man can survive, because a goat can eat anything and nothing is better for you than goat's milk.”

In another commentary, I have described one of my heroes, a Catholic priest driving a pick-up truck; like me, waiting for a bridge to be repaired in the Congo. On the back of his pick-up truck, four dying AIDS victims with a nanny goat for nourishment, all heading toward Goma, where he hoped to find some healthcare for the victims.

If I had walked through the streets of a Japanese city, days, or even weeks, before the earthquake/tsunami carrying a sign, which on it said, “prepare”, I would have been considered a nut, telling the highest IQ people in the world to prepare for a disaster. They were evidently not prepared in any way for the disaster, even having witnessed the last great tsunami, just a few years ago when 300,000 were killed. The Japanese, like Americans, like everyone, fail to prepare for contingencies.

If I were to walk through the average American city carrying a sign that says “Prepare!” I would be considered a nut, probably a “religious nut”. You don't see them now, but when I was a child, there were “Burma shave” signs up and down the highway with funny sayings but all winding up saying, “prepare to meet God.” Every cemetery, every gravestone is a testimony that most did not prepare to meet God. Every news broadcast, every synapse of the human brain, tells anyone that it would be good to prepare for a disaster. They are coming so fast we cannot keep up with them. 300 earthquakes in the Pacific area alone, just recently. We have already forgotten about Christ Church, Haiti, Chile.

Only those who were loved, have not left those who will not quickly recover from these disasters. Only those who suffer the poverty of recovery from disaster, know the cutting aspects, the neurological leeching of hunger, thirst, need for shelter, the desire to do something for an innocent, uncomprehending child. Only a man who has experienced war, knows war. Only a person who has experienced God can know God. God always knows what He is doing. As 19 year old Joan of Arc said, just before she was burned at the stake, “I was born for such a time as this.” On the authority of God's Word, on the authority of everything I have ever read, every experience of my life, I can tell you that there is one psychological disease from which there is no recovery. It is the traumatic disease-experience of poverty, I don't care what anyone says, prophet, preacher, poet, you never recover from poverty.

Even though I was born to prominent, early, established families on the shore of America...just hard-working, land-owning farm people. As a child, there was never any doubt about my parents, grandparents, right on back, affections and afflictions, God, family, country. The church always came first, then the family, then community activity, predominately in the schools. The government was supported through paying taxes, and at time of war, records of family members who have died in conflict.

It was during the Great Depression, I had heard of inside plumbing, water coming through pipes into a building, only a few relatives had such. My mother picked out the patterns for her dresses from the hog feed sacks, she made her own so my sister could have store-bought clothes. My grandparents, old, worn-out, trying to keep large farms going with hired help, while their only son was in combat in the South Pacific. My father, all his brothers, involved in military service or the war effort, my mother and her children keeping the farm going.

I will never forget the old men of the family, and the community, who always wore shoes split, so as not to aggravate bunions (callouses from tissue and joint enlargement around the bases of the toes), this came from wearing ill-fitted shoes as children. Nothing, I repeat, nothing has gnawed at my faith like poverty, good people living exemplary lives, totally embalmed by faith, eeking out an existence.

From a small country school (13 in graduating class), I matriculated at our state university. Always aghast at those in the state elite...prep schools, fraternities, expensive sweaters and convertibles. I remember listening to these recipients of elitist state genealogy, profiteers of wealth, laugh about the “country hicks”, “country girls” they had besmirched. I thought, “they are talking about my people, my relatives, my sister.” Even today, I hear the country club generations talking about their great chefs. At Chapel Hill, I allotted myself $1 a day for food, 25 cents for breakfast, a bowl of grits and coffee, 25 cents for lunch, the cheapest sandwich and coffee, 50 cents for supper, a vegetable plate. You see, we never knew what it was to eat a large piece of meat. I still have the large cast-iron fireplace cooking pot which my ancestors used from the very beginning to cook their food in one large pot. They were still using that when I went to college, cooking in one large pan in the oven. My entire university career, eight years, it gnawed at me, night and day, as I worked every night in order to go to school during the day, economizing to survive. The question, why is God so unfair to his own? They have so little, while Satan's crowd, through his magic, have so much.

Back in the council chambers of eternity, our Blessed Lord had already made all these decisions, it is just up to us to obey. For instance, he wanted to see what I would do after living a live, such as I have lived, as a child, teenager, college student, commissioned medical officer. He wanted to see how I would react after I have lost my most precious possession next to life itself, my eyesight.

The test of man, the test of a believer, is not what he does when everything is going well, but what he does when everything goes wrong. Then, he wanted me to scurry around the world, smelling, hearing, asking questions, finding out, truly, how most of the world lives.

Surviving, preparing, everything about life involves preparation, sowing and reaping. Until you understand the sower, you will never understand our Blessed Lord's plan for the universe. I will never recover from poverty, but I am filled with thankfulness that I was shown survival on the family farm. I have also been allowed to see much wealth in the world, and I truly cannot comprehend how these individuals whether on Wall Street, “K Street” or Oxford Street, could depend on a goat for survival.