#1921 Gourmet and Garnishment

#1921 

Gourmet and Garnishing

 "Humpty Dumpty" Mother Goose

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, 

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; 

All the king's horses and all the king's men 

Couldn't put Humpty together again.

Lord, I don't want to make everyone as unhappy as I am.  I just wish that even family, friends, neighbors could understand my concern about their unconcern.  

In other articles, my own personal life has become much too personal, perhaps, even self-serving, I just want others to know why I have the obligation to share many experiences with you.  God help those who have never had the desire to share life's sorrows as well as life's joys.  God help those who have never wanted for anything, who never got rid of the old man of sin and rejection and became a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17) filled with the righteousness of Christ...attempting to see what Christ would see, what Christ would feel about those who did not win life's lottery...those with the DNA of the African, DNA of the Native American Indians.  God help those who overcame poverty, addictions, and the many other challenges which God used to glorify him.  This old, blind, disabled veteran will never understand how so many take life so casually, as if they are on a "merry-go-round" from which they can disembark at will, you only go around one time, and it is so fast.  I will never understand those, who think that God is made in their image, not they in God's image.  

I don't claim any special incite along with my lack of eyesight, but I truly believe God had in his plan for me, and we are all chosen for a special place in his plans, a reason for my existence, I think he wanted me to see special people, as they are, as I sold Bibles door to door every summer, to pay my way through college.  Why would he have made the arrangement for me to travel the world?  Every continent, studying people with whom I could not relate because they were all so different: yet, so much alike.  

I was selling books, in a little place near the Black River called Council, an ancient black woman was sitting in a rocker on her front porch, and she certainly did not look like a prospect for buying anything...everything destitute.  But, as was my experience, so many times, she possessed within her persona neither haplessness nor hopeless, only holiness which only God, in his mercy can provide.

She was so enthralled by my presence, my personality, my wanting to share with her, some words she said to me, which I have used a thousand times in speaking before groups, "Son, if I miss out on Heaven I have really missed out."  She told me that she had lost her husband, a hauler of logs, in a terrible accident.  She said, "I was left with three small children, two boys and a girl.  The landowner who owned this house told me I could live here as long as I wished, all I was required to do, work on the farm when needed and help his wife at her house when needed."  She said, "My children and myself foraged all the fields for potatoes-corn-beans, anything that had been missed.  We dried the food in the sun and stored it in large paper bags hung from the ceiling so rats could not get at our food.  The boys roamed the woodlands picking up broken limbs and lighter pine knots for a large wood pile, so we could stay warm and cook.  This is the way we survived, by God's mercy and the help of friends who knew our situation.  My children and I were always in church, my children were always in school."

She explained that all of her children graduated from high school and with the help of the government and their church, went onto college.  She took great pride in telling me how they excelled in college, how both boys became medical doctors, her daughter a PhD professor at St Augustine College.  "Would you believe from this old house, this old woman, three children with doctors in front of their names?  Of course, in their prosperity they wanted me to move away from here, but I am happy here in my familiar surroundings, my friends, they keep my house stuffed with food and other things.  They come home to see me but have never forgotten the bigotry and discrimination abutted them."  

Most people, unlike this woman and her children, even, unlike this blind veteran, do not have the scar tissue to understand what has happened and what is happening in their world.  You must have some scars, some healed over tissue, to understand the world around you: most sit in light, the light of truth, yet wear blinders to everything going on.  EVIL ALWAYS DISGUISES ITSELF AS GOOD.  Can we even imagine the mental processing of Blacks or Indians who were so mistreated?  And we think, that since a few things have changed (we all drink out of the same water fountains-we all go to the same toilets-we all ride in the same transportation-allowed to eat in any restaurant we choose-can spend our same colored money at any store we choose) that magically, our brains have become rewired by laws "supposedly" of justice.  

There is no sewer of injustice more evident to the senses of eyes or nose than that found at courthouses, statehouses, and certainly the nation's domed house of power.  In our nation's capitol even the statues of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson mean nothing.  Even the painting of Pocahontas being baptized, found in the Rotunda, means nothing.  "In God We Trust" on our currency, means nothing.  The power brokers of America, local, state, national are only interested in one thing and one thing only, reelection and staying close to the money pot.  We get so nauseated with "talking heads" who have an unholy alliance with the politicians, in a deceitful ability to never offend, always "politically correct".  I just pray to God that with a plain talking President Trump some of this deceitfulness will find a "hiding place".  I cannot believe it is just veterans, I believe most hardworking, taxpaying, God-fearing citizens, and victims of that boring gaze of bureaucrats found in every government office...the disdain-disgust-indifference with which they are treated will soon have reason to "run for cover".  

It is encouraging for those of us from poverty, who worked our way through higher education, to know, that those students living "grandly" from government handouts (more free stuff) will repay their government loans from the garnishment of their social security checks.  This 86-year-old, blind, Army medical officer worked his way entirely through eight years of professional education...surviving on spending $1 a day for food, there was nothing I could do about it, but can you imagine how it infuriated me to help staff Army hospitals where most of the staff were Nazi-German officers brought to this country after WWII.  Hitler's great program of rockets was being continued at Red Stone Arsenal, Alabama.  The closest Army hospital was at Fort McClellan, Alabama, I was assigned there, numb with unbelief, under the command of former Nazi officers wearing American Army uniforms...such names as Marx, Brauer, Gottlieb, etc.  I remember the officer I replaced, and what he said on his way out, "I don't know what is going on here but the inmates have taken over the asylum."  Now, as those in government, industry, even preachers eat gourmet food.  Those who wore the uniforms, live with the injuries, whose ancestors did not have the DNA to impress the masses, we just survive, and wait for the ax to fall.