Binoculars and Biographies

“Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” - Gertrude Stein
What is human intelligence: the intelligence of a small baby is so different than that of a MENSA member, is so different than the elderly with senile dementia. This peculiar entity of the animal homo sapiens, an animal with a backbone, with a mind and soul, so different from other animals who do not think or know that they are going to die. The genus homo sapiens, human being, even allows his soul to breathe: prayer, the greatest power of which a human mind can conceive.
    One of the greatest memories of my childhood, watching my grandmother in prayer. She would sit with her elbow propped on the arm of the rocking chair, hand to her face, her lips moving. This great lady never had her name in the newspaper as the important person of any type… Only her obituary. She never taught a class, never gave a lecture, I heard her speak at a family church house one time (Church built in 1864 by my great grandparents on both my mother and father’s side). Once a year, there was a business meeting at the church. When there was a roll call of all members, there was one girl in the community who had joined the church as a child and her name was still on the roll. She was the county whore, and everyone knew her reputation. I don’t believe she attended the church following her baptism in the fish pond. My grandmother stood and said, “If Rydell Sasser’s name stays on the church role, then you can take mine off.” My grandmother believed in a backdoor revival. It did not take FBI, SBI or a powerful telescope for her to know what was going on in the community.
    From the time that Galileo used his little telescope attempting to study stars from the balcony of the baptistery of the great cathedral at Pisa, Italy or from the time Leeuwenhoek used the microscope, men have brought knowledge from a desert of ignorance.
    Binoculars, once so expensive, now so available to anyone. Nothing is more important in warfare than binoculars. The Native American Indian brave could put his ear to the ground and determine very accurately the number of buffalo in a herd many miles away. The same brave could look at mountain peaks many miles away and read smoke signals. Those of us in the military learned early that the enemy had binoculars, they enjoyed killing officers, especially medical officers. The officer wears his rank and medical insignia on his shirt collar. You learn early to turn your shirt collar under. We live in a world of fake-deceitful news media. It is difficult to believe anything on the news or read in the newspaper. We have learned to make records of everything we say. President Richard Nixon left 800 miles of tapes which he recorded in his office of foreign leaders, associates, friends, as well as foes.
In a world of political correctness, stolen identification, thievery of every type, you learn to protect yourself. BECAUSE if you could carry binoculars with you constantly and learn to “spot” signs of deceivers-fakers-pretenders like a “birdwatcher” (a birdwatcher identifies a particular bird by certain colors or other very distinctive markings), then we would not be so easily deceived by a very deceptive world. There are 32,300 verses of scripture in God’s word. There are 1189 chapters in the Bible. The chapter midway the Bible, Psalm 118, the 8th verse says, “Trust in the Lord and put no confidence in men.” It may be interesting to you that 117 Psalm is the shortest chapter in the Bible. The 119 Psalm is the longest chapter in the Bible. Every word in the answer book, the book which God took time to write for us tells us to trust God and to distrust our fellow man. This is particularly important to those that are disabled… Blind, no longer mentally alert, children have no choice but to trust adults. The shame of the ages living in a world where lust-greed-lack of morals is now so fully acceptable, even our children and elderly are so easily abused. This writer is totally blind, when I could see, I so enjoyed visiting graveyards, so interesting to observe a famous name or even one not so famous and look at the dash or hyphen between the date of birth and date of death, knowing it was in that space that your biography was written. People live their own eulogies; they live their own funeral. In a nation where there are more people in prison than any other nation in the world, where 9 billion dollars is spent to celebrate a satanic holiday (Halloween), can we understand why rotten sin has taken over the world, particularly our own country, a good name is no longer rather to be chosen than silver or gold (Proverbs 22:1). The mortality rate is still 100% and we do not know when God will say enough is enough. At the end, political influence, real estate, securities accounts will make no difference… Last breath here, first breath there. When will we learn that each day we live, just one day closer to Heaven or Hell. Trust is the greatest joy an individual can possess. I well remember the time where we could trust science, even science foundations. I well remember the time where could trust medicine, pharmacy, and all the allied healthcare professionals. Now, it is all a matter of money. One of my best friends, Robert Futrelle, was chief counsel to my local congressman (Robert was killed in a plane crash) he said to me, “Tom, the only interest in the congressional office is money… Raising money for the next election. Everyone squeezing as much money as possible from the big pot of federal funds. Our days are spent with lobbyists, from one cocktail party-buffet to another. The only time I ever saw our congressmen get excited was when he received a letter from some poor man, who did not have paper but rather wrote his letter on a brown paper sack.” He said, “Washington is just one big mafia pit of corruption.” Yet, like the phantom feelings, a human being feels in an amputated limb, we want to believe that all is well with our country. This old blind veteran, like the veterans in many VA hospitals, like the 116,000 buried on foreign soil, like the thousands buried in family graveyards across the footed plains, we do not have the binoculars, the telescope, the microscope, to accurately define our disease. I can think of only one definition of the disease afflicting my country, the same disease that has always affected the body, soul, and mind of mere mortals: sins ruined that can only be corrected by the redemption of Jesus Christ.