Dance or Dirge

“‘We played the pipe for you,
and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge,
and you did not mourn.’ (Matthew 11:17)

Buried next to President Woodrow Wilson, in the floor of the National Cathedral, Washington, DC, blind, deaf, Helen Keller... an inspiration to everyone but particularly to us who are disabled. I have written at length about Helen Keller, finally a breakthrough to her marvelous brain, by her teacher using an old fashioned water pump, they learned to communicate. Helen went on the graduate from college, travel the world, friend of presidents, world leaders and celebrities.

Keller said, “Life is either an adventure or nothing at all.” So many, struggling, not living... losing their health trying to gain wealth and then spending their wealth trying to regain health.

Life is totally unpredictable. In a vehicle, on the highway, an approaching vehicle, mechanical or human failure, just a few feet from instant death.

If you had just one month to live, what changes would you make? What would you do differently? This writer can honestly say that if he had only one month, one week, one hour, nothing would change. I believe the committed Christian, chosen of God, is ready to go anytime. “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” (Phillipians 2:13)

In this day of the minimal believer walking the isle, perhaps even going into the baptismal pool, just sitting on an “Easy Boy” thinking they are covered. Not even the most dedicated believer knows the importance of being chosen of God... not that you chose God, but rather that God chose you.

Life is for living, the greatest freedom-liberty known to man is salvation provided by God. Most Christians do not realize that this, the greatest treasure on earth, better than any pleasure the world can provide. Health gives much freedom. Our body is the temple of God, not a dumpster.

Most people spend their lives going through the motions and, when you about ready to live, it is time to die. It is just upside down. When you have acquired the knowledge, acquired enough of this world’s wealth, actually know what living is all about, it is time to die. Many do not think it will happen, too much ego. (easing God out)

God has given us the answer book but we want to fly “solo”. Not only our food intake, but what goes in the mind. If a sewage pipe were to break at your house, with the smell, the sight, the decadence, you would get it repaired, out of mind but, the average adult sits and watches 4 hours of television each day, even though the set is on for 7 hours, and actually allows their child, most sensitive years, to watch such trash. One cannot get a vehicle repaired, doctor’s reception, waiting rooms of any type, without a television invading the space.

The power of satin cannot be overestimated or underestimated. We do hot have any record of God appearing to Moses after He left Egypt, at age 40, shepherding sheep in the desert of Midian. Any bush would have done but God appeared in a burning bush. He always knew Moses' location. He had a job for Moses, to lead the children of Egypt from bondage after 400 years. Moses, age 80, Aaron age 83 , went before Pharaoh, “let my people go”. The magicians of pharaoh had the palace crawling with snakes, but Moses' rod-snake devoured them all. Satin is not going to lie down and beg you not to bother him any more. He is on the job, but God can handle the problem.

The greatest tragedy of life now, the 2000 years after the cross, the 10,000 years before the cross, men do not realize the power of God... His magnificence in designing the world and everything in it. I have stood at both the Arctic and Antarctic, 450,000 square miles at both the top and bottom of the earth, of glaciers, snowfall-ice crystals. One man, Wilson Bentley, using an ingenious method, photographed tens of thousands of snowflakes, no two alike, each designed by God. The largest almost one foot wide. Look into space, 450 billion galaxies and after that, space beyond measure. Just think, the designer of the universe, every star, snowflake, grain of sand, interested in our happiness and wanting us to enjoy living.

The Perils of Vision

The 1947 film, Perils of Pauline, starred Betty Hutton, William Demarest and Billy DeWolfe in a comedy depicting Pauline as an enterprising starlet. The movie has never been forgotten because of its exaggerated conflict.

Those of us who are blind will never comprehend the lackadaisical attitude of sighted people---those who just take their eye sight for granted. One young man, working for me, went home and covered his eyes with adhesive tape to see if he could manage, as I do, in just doing his routine around the house. He said it didn't last but a few hours. He just could not stand it. He said, “How do you live everyday in a world of darkness, taking care of yourself, even running several businesses, and on top of all of your financial and other interests?”

Many years ago, a young man in my military unit died in a vehicle crash. Since he was such an outstanding person, I went to the funeral and had the privilege of walking into the church (St. Paul's Methodist Church) with his mother. She said to me, “He was outstanding in every way: smart, never any trouble and never IN any trouble; but he did not want to attend church and I never did insist on his attending, and spirituality was completely left out of his life. This is the first time he had been in church since he was a baby.” As we went to the cemetery, and I walked up to the open grave with her, the minister at the head of the grave took some sand out of his pocket and put the sand on the casket in the figure of the cross. I realized, just as this grieving mother must have realized, that it was too late for her son to make things right with his Creator. “Without vision, people perish.” (Proverbs 29:18)

As with most children who find their life in front of a television screen, most of the time following the example of their parents, who spend six hours a day watching television, their space world has been drawn in—limited---and the eye doctor, such as your writer, must put minus lenses in Rx glasses frames on them to push their space world out where it belongs.

Contact lenses were a very new thing when I was in school and beginning my professional activities. The first contact lenses were scleral, covering the entire eyeball. Can you even imagine how uncomfortable they were? But as I said many times to many parents, “Young girls would wear thumb tacks in their eyes to keep from wearing thick eye glasses.” Then there were the smaller plastic contact lenses, then the soft plastic lenses, and now surgery to physically and surgically correct myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism. Today, very few people wear eye glasses but the physical, emotional and neurological problems concerning sight in learning still exist.

Like everything else in the health care industry, technology and development has made things much easier but problems still exist. As a young practitioner, the cataract patient had to lay perfectly still for days with a cement block on each side of the head. Today, a lens transplant can be made and the patient can be at regular activity the next day. However, there has been no cure and little treatment for diseases of the retina, optic nerves and the tracts through the brain, where all vision takes place. The eyeballs themselves are just receptors for light. All vision takes place in the brain itself. (Calcarine Cortex, area 18 at the back of the head) I never cease to be amazed about the trash that people will allow their eyes to see as unfiltered it pollutes millions of neurons in their brain, anymore than I can understand how a woman, or man for that matter, can spit in the face of almighty God by giving their most personal and private possession, their sexual senses, to just anyone who has the money to pay for such. Prostitution, fornication, adultery, the desensitizing of values, the corruption of purpose, must surely embarrass our blessed Lord who gave us a body created in His image, in such a marvelous manner. (Psalm 139:13-14)

According to Forbes Magazine, pornography accounts for $10 billion of revenue each year. Most pornography comes from the Northrigde area in California which was almost destroyed in the last big earthquake. Maybe, when the earth starts shaking there again, as it will, these pornographers might think of how almighty God will shake them one of these days for the misery and deception, despair and distortion they have brought to humanity. Any time I have talked to a Muslim about religion, he has always thrown pornography in my face. The fact that this “Christian” nation, a country built on the sovereignty of God's Word, would, because of the Supreme Court, allow such 'slop' (liquid garbage) to addict a large percentage of our young people and adults. The fascination and addiction to pornography comes through eyesight. Helen Keller, born deaf and blind, said in a speech one time, “How can precious eyes be used for anything except the viewing of beauty---a beautiful bird, flower, or smile of a child?” (When I heard Helen Keller by record she had never heard a voice and her speech had to have an interpreter. Buried in the floor of the national cathedral, this magnificent blind lady went on to graduate from several colleges and became an inspiration to the sighted world.)

Recently, in the presence of my son and youngest grandson (a college senior), I said, “Never doubt for a moment that God does not know what He is doing. He chose me to serve Him as a blind person. He knows how to keep us where He wants us.” My son said, “I have heard how fast you drove your car before the war; how you were always in a hurry.” GOD IS BOSS! He has a right to slow us down. Enjoy and prize your eyesight every day of your life. We may not have a Mount of Transfiguration experience such as Moses and Elijah but with purity of eyes we will see God.

“I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes.” (Psalm 101:3)

Committee of One

Everyday, as we listen to the news, we wonder how the world can get any crazier. Reverend Al Sharpton gave a news conference in which he expressed despair that Tiger Woods did not show enough diversity in his mistresses. He said, “It is a reflection on beautiful black girls and makes them feel very bad that he did not have a black girl as a mistress.” We learned yesterday that in one year President Obama has spent more tax funds than all 43 previous presidents combined (George Washington through George W. Bush). This morning the featured headline in the local paper, just off the busiest thoroughfare in this city, an 86 year old woman dead in her home and probably had been dead since spring. Even though paid caregivers were in and out of the house each day. A New York City fireman told me that any time a fire was in a government housing project in Manhattan it was routine for them to find closets full of dead people covered in lime. Any time an older person dies in one of these housing projects, the body is put in a closet and covered with lime so whoever can keep cashing the social security and welfare checks that come in.

As a totally blind, 100% disabled, service-connected, medical officer veteran of the Korean era, most of my time is spent inside staying abreast of everything with radios. I refuse to listen to the sewer known as television. Participating on many national talk shows, I stay in contact with disabled veterans and handicapped citizens from around the country. I have appointed myself a committee of one to write letters and bring the plight of the disabled to the attention of the power brokers, locally, state-wide and nationally. I will assure you that none of the people paid handsome salaries to act as agents for the country's largest minority are doing anything. Evidently, the ADA, elected senators, and congressmen and the agencies which they are supposed to regulate and give oversight, are just “paid to sleep”.

Recently, an aide from Senator Burr's office (each Senator and Congressman has 50 assistants) called me about a matter I had brought to the Senator's attention. She said, “We have never heard from you before.” I said, “That is strange because I write you almost everyday about some matter of interest to me.” In a few minutes she called back, they had discovered a filing cabinet full of my correspondence which evidently, had never been read. Senator Burr, being the ranking minority member of the Veterans Committee, had been contacted by me about many problems concerning many veterans.

One of my early telephone contacts in this city was a lady named Catherine Vasalou. Catherine had been born blind. She did have one young brother, Billy, who fell into a pot of hot wash water when her mother was doing the family wash. Young, blind Catherine said she would never forget his begging her to do something for him as her mother went out to the highway trying to flag down some help. She told about the small casket and her weeping parents. Catherine went to the School for the Blind in Raleigh. She told me about her mistreatment there but, more than her personal mistreatment, the mistreatment of the blind students from the segregated Black School for the Blind in Garner. They would bring the black, blind children to the white, blind school to rake leaves and do the yard work. She said, “As bad as the white blind students were treated, the black blind students were treated worse.” I can testify to this because, as a young child, I saw the treatment of the black mental patients at the NC Asylum for the Negro Insane in Goldsboro (now Cherry Hospital).

Catherine graduated from ECU and did graduate work at UNC-CH. She came home to care for her parents until their deaths while working full time at a local hospital as a typist. After her mother's death, Catherine lived alone until her death at age 85 three years ago. I asked Catherine once, “During all your years as a blind citizen in Wilmington, NC, how many times did any church, civic group, state agency, ever do anything for you?” She said, “When my mother died one church brought by some food to the house.” During hurricanes or holidays she was left to live alone and died alone. She told me she had left instructions with the funeral home just to take her body to the cemetery and bury her next to her parents without any services, any obituary...anything. She said, “The world left me alone while alive, I want to be alone in death.”

As chief of a clinic at one US Army hospital, a sergeant under me who had survived WWII and the Korean Conflict, was the EKG technician (he did all the EKG tests and readings). He and his wife had one child, a son which I saw once, who was both deaf and blind. There were no military facilities for this child and the public schools in Alabama did not make arrangements. The child lived very much as an animal. Can we even imagine what it would have been like for Helen Keller, also from Alabama, if her parents had not had the money to furnish specialized care for her deafness and blindness. She describes all this in her 1903 book, an inspiration for any life. When Hitler was burning books in Germany in 1933, her biography was the first book on his list because he so despised disabled people. He put 275,000 disabled German citizens to death. This seems like a small number compared to the 6 million Jews who went to the death chambers, but where were the sane, responsible citizens who saw this inhumanity to man going on? Are we really doing any better in this country?

Veterans know what it is like to be second class citizens, those who have returned disabled...blind, deaf, crippled, mentally disparaged. There will be more from these wars taking place at the present time. Think of young men seeing these spattered remains of their comrades from the brutality of suicide bombers taking place at present. I can tell you without fear of contradiction, that this blind veteran never had one minute of rehabilitation. It took 30 years for me to get the disabled housing allowance wherein I could put a security system in my house. For 30 years, I put cement blocks by my exit doors so in a break in I could try to get some help by phone. Since my windows are all nailed shut I fully realize the disaster of fire since I cannot see fire.

On radio, and at other times, I have offered to give anyone $1,000 who can show that any veteran's group, civic club, church, and I could almost say family member, has done anything for this disabled veteran. I would not even attempt to describe the insults, such as the nurse spitting on me in a University hospital because of her disdain for veterans and military activities. Veterans did not serve for recognition, but this veteran has tried to bring the disparity of the disabled and the handicapped, the largest minority in the population (est. 33%), to the attention of the media and the public.

Christ never appointed a committee, he always called upon a man to do His work, Abraham, Elijah, Paul. Perhaps, as was the case with civil rights and voting rights, attention to the disabled will occur. It was said, in Germany, that when the Nazi's came for the gypsies no one cared. When the Nazi's came for the disabled, no one cared. When they came for the intellectuals, no one cared. When they came for the Jews, no one cared. When they came for the rest, THERE WAS NO ONE TO CARE.

Miralce Worker

#356

Miracle Workers

There were too many for even the Apostle Paul writing in Hebrews 11 to describe. But, heroes of the faith are numerous and an inspiration to those who can still be inspired. Likewise, volumes have been written about just average everyday, persons who through the grace of God have become miracle workers, Helen Keller, Napoleon Hill, Andrew Carnegie, etc. By grace, through faith, in Jesus Christ, we come in a relationship with the greatest miracle worker, the very son of God, who put on a tent of human flesh and dwelled among us never going but a few miles from the stable in which he was born, never lead an army, wrote a book, owned a home, or any other possessions other than his one garment, for which men gambled, but by whose birthday we date every legal document. In recent years, we have seen modern miracle workers, Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino's pizza, billionaire philanthropist though partially reared in an orphanage, and subjected to every disappointment one can imagine, has crowned his life with a crowing faith, which has lead to promotion of the pro life movement and the building of Catholic colleges and cathedrals.

Add to the list, such names as Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and even Steve Jobs of Apple Computer fame, who has just undergone a liver transplant and returned to work. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” -Steve Jobs

Irma Bombeck reminds us not to confuse success with celebrity. Think of Madonna and Helen Keller. We could also say don't confuse importance of salaries. The quarterback gets a tremendous salary; but at a time of physical need, the EMS technician is far more important. The television soap opera actor or talking head news reporter, is not as important as the disadvantaged mission worker to the destitute lost. An uneducated kitchen worker serving food in a homeless shelter is the most important thing in the world to the hungry with an empty stomach.

The coach, the highly paid, is only paid for performance. A losing coach is soon looking for a another job. Symbolic acts often lead to changes. Political correctness has given a new twist to the adage “honesty is the best policy.” As Winston Churchill said, “Words are weapons. Use them wisely.” Like a small hole in the dike, a small crack in a wall, a pinhole in a roof, and a compromised seam in a jet, damage can become widespread and dangerous very quickly. The good a philanthropist does over many years is overlooked and forgotten very quickly with one small indiscretion. Only a true miracle worker can live the complicated 21st century life, without discomfort or discovery under the microscope of present day rapid reporting through the internet and ambitious vindictive hounds of deterrence.

True success, true happiness in life is going to bed at night anxious to get up in the morning and ready for another day.