#1888 Eye Candy

#1888

Eye Candy

 A photo of the Red Porphyry Disk by Linda C. McCabe from Legends of Medieval France and Italy.

"My "chief aversion" is the system of greed, private profit, privilege, and violence which makes up the control of the world today, and which has brought it the tragic crisis of unprecedented hunger and unemployment. I am opposed to the new deal [sic] because it strives to strengthen and prolong production for private profit. At bottom I am for conserving the full powers of every person on earth by expanding them to their individual limits. Therefore, I am for socialism, disarmament, and ultimately for abolishing the State itself as an instrument of property, the abolition of the propertied class and sole control by those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal. It sums up into one single purpose -- the abolition of the system dog-eat-dog under which we live, and the substitution by the most effective non-violence possible of a system of cooperative ownership and use of all wealth."  - Roger Baldwin, ACLU

When God forgives, he forgets.  The internet neither forgives nor forgets.  In my many excursions to St. Peters Basilica in Rome, even passing through a holy door, I was aware of the porphyryc disc where past kings such as Charlemagne were crowned.  Now, any poor peasant, such as your writer, can traverse this area.  Why not, as a believer in Jesus Christ, a child of God, we are joint heirs with Christ and inheritors of everything that God has provided for his children.  I can still hear those farm people of Eastern North Carolina, many of whom had never worn a piece of gold (wedding band-wrist watch) sing that old hymn "I am the Child of a King". 

During WWII, before radar, powerful search lights penetrated the skies attempting to locate bombing airplanes.  Search lights would often be used at county fairs as advertising to attract attention.  In the bottomless ocean of technology, wireless everything, there is no longer need for search lights.  Mankind has always owned a remarkable ability to hide things...family members-employees-government forums.  In the circle of mental involvement there is great reluctance to reveal many things to one another, hard for husbands and wives to share inner thoughts, difficult for children to confess.  Have you ever noticed how married couples "bark" at one another?  Constantly correct one another?  I can always tell if a male caller to a radio talk show is married, most married men have been corrected so many times by a wife that they are afraid to say anything original.  The greatest writers-orators-preachers are not married; they have learned to escape the criticism-berating of a wife.  A married couple I had not been around for a long time was in my house recently, nothing had changed they were still barking-correcting at one another.  Much of it has to do with eye candy, one having more education-ancestry-financial independence than the other.  My very first memory of my paternal grandparents, a horrible quarrel between them about who was going to pay my aunt's (their daughter's) college tuition.  Both had their own properties, their own bank accounts.  It was far different with my maternal grandparents, as well as my own parents.  My maternal grandmother, as well as my own mother, had learned to submit to the male of the household.  There is nothing wrong with submission, Jesus submitted to his father.  I am sure Jesus submitted to his earthly parents, Mary and Joseph.  Commoners have always submitted to kings.  Soldiers of lower ranks have always submitted to officers and students have always submitted to teachers.  It is the eye candy of realizing the end result.  Everyone cannot be a chief, there must be indians.  The mural of history study, learning the patience of God in dealing with humanity...God saw that everything he created was good.  (Genesis 1:31)  There were thorns on rose bushes, gnats and flies as well as beautiful puppies and singing birds.  We learn to accept the flaws-warts-imperfections of our world.  Most of us can remember certain tragedies: the attack on Pearl Harbor, the attack on 9/11, JFK and MLK assassinations.  But, thank God, we have the eye candy of wonderful personal days, graduation from college, marriage, birth of a child.  Many do not look at it this way because the loss and sadness involved, but the death of a saint of God is cause for celebration, graduation from the thorns-troubles of this world into the splendor of eternal bliss.

Most of us have images sutured into our brain system forever, escape from an automobile collision, recovery from a dread disease, snatched from drowning in a pool or pond.  People who appear normal, willing to exchange the testing on this wicked earth...rather choosing to spend eternity in hell.  In my own house, knowing that I trusted them, young people who would risk hell for a two dollar lottery ticket or even walk out of my house carrying the chest containing my mothers 1847 Rogers silver plate..silver which she left to me and of which she was so proud.  I have said to every young person, particularly local college students, who have worked for me, "I trust you in my house, do you value that trust?  It is so easy to rob a blind man but all this eye candy you see around, nice things I have hauled back from all over the world, so enticing...so easily converted to cash, is really just "junk" compared to your immortal soul."  Of course, the trouble with millennials, today's fat-sassy-spoiled young people, they don't believe they have a soul.  Their entire energy involving living, "more free stuff"...more eye candy.  Have you noticed that every time there is a bazaar killing, the interviewed neighbors will always say, "Such a nice person."  We have all learned to be eye candy.  I have never known a conman (convicted) I did not like and the problem, will not accept help.  One of my employees, financial distress, I was attempting to find him work, he went to my friend's house to cut the grass (a bank vice president) and stole the power tools from his outside shed.  This young man had served in Afghanistan...a blind veteran attempting to help a veteran with sight.  The eye candy of power tools which he could sell, the temptation was just too great.  All images branded-burned into the brain are not eye candy.  I have written about the barefoot refugee children on icy roads on the border of Pakistan. 

An image I cannot get out of my mind, allowing me to know the poverty of "kin folks".  Me with my father at the bedside of an aunt near death, she was my grandfather's sister, hard life-hard work raising children and grandchildren...pain of a miserable death.  I must have been about 3 or 4 years of age, he wanted Aunt Eda to see me for the last time.  She was near death in the house of a son, bleak room, almost nonexistent mattress on the bed, slop-jar under the bed.  Today's deaths in families are so sanitized, there was nothing sanitized here, she and my father talked about her home-going, just a few hours away. 

Men who sit in chairs all day, who exercise their legs on the golf course and their arms at happy hour...have not realized, yet, that the creator of the world and everything in it still has the power to bring their attention to bomb shelters, underground tunnels, MREs (meals ready to eat).  We learn everyday about the incompetence-ineptness of the FBI-CIA and every other facet of government. 

What will you say, when your grandchild, and what will I say when my great granddaughter says, "What did you do when you saw our country was dying?"  "What did you do when you saw the socialistic-communistic-atheistic takeover of my country?"

'"What did you do when you had a chance to elect decent leaders of integrity instead of criminals?"  "What did you do when there was still a chance for a president to appoint honest Supreme Court Justices?" 

As long as I have been in this world, 86 years, I have heard that "ignorance is bliss".  I believe that bliss is for the abnormal.  I find that the only happy people around me are those on welfare...those who have nothing and want nothing.  Those who do not want to take a risk or accept responsibility. 

I have been to Burma twice, a Buddhist nation, where early Christians missionaries, such as Carey were tortured.  Travelling alone, object of much interest, I could always find someone to talk with at the hotel bar...as I drank my soda water.  A hotel bartender in Rangoon would not take his eyes off me, stop talking with me.  He said, "You are the first Christian I have ever talked with.  I have a vision in my brain, a gold cross, when I was very young, a great flood, my parents had me on the housetop, just before we all went under the water a washtub came by.  My mother put me in the washtub before they died.  Somewhere in the long flood experience a bird landed on me and laid an egg.  I was old enough to have seen my mother cook eggs, some way; I broke the shell and ate the inside of the egg.  Later, I was rescued from that tub, raised in a home as a Buddhist.  I still think that there is a reason for the image of the cross."  I said, "Your parents were Christians and they had put the image of the gold cross in your house in your mind."  My room was close by and I always carried in my suitcase a New Testament, he could speak and read English, I gave him the Bible.  Don't tell me that he was not fulfilled, by what God with my help, eye candy, left to him.