Reality Enigmatic Plunge At Eighty-Five

#1773

“We have shared the incommunicable experience of war, we have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top. In our youth our hearts were touched with fire.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

            When you reach the age of eighty-five, you no longer have fear of death. You no longer have the competitive spirit. You no longer have the fright of un-forgiveness. You have forgiven all those who have wronged you and if they do not accept such, they are on God's hook, after all, with mercy to spare God has forgiven me for all my rotten sins and if he can forgive "the chief of sinners" such as me, I can forgive others and ask forgiveness of others.. commission and omission.

 

            At eighty-five you have given up about your looks, about your ambitions, your relationships, you have learned not to be shocked at anything, to expect very little from the world and those who inhabit it. You realize how little you have affected those with whom you have come in contact. Those who should have been closest to you. Most were just pretending, like bureaucrats, politicians, even  the cashier at the grocery store, "have a good day," ALL were just going through the motions. You realize just how empty most phrases "I'm praying for you," and the death of a parent or friend, someone saying, "they are better off" (how do they know they are better off?) Or, some irrational statement, finding a needle in a hay-stack (most people have never seen a hay-stack, have no idea what it is like.) OR, "killing two birds with one stone" (those who would kill a bird or anything else have no idea about the intricacies of life... even bird life.) Some of these same people would vote for politicians or groups that are for planned parenthood, that would take the life of the most innocent. Most people I know have little concept of photosynthesis (plant life) or the homeostasis of animal life (clotting of blood, etc.) When my great grandparents were children the population of the United States was thirty-one million. Every time we pass a graveyard where these old people are buried, we should give them the honor of thinking about what they accomplished. Now, the population of the United States, three-hundred and fifteen million. Ninety million do not work, nearly fifty million on welfare, almost 200 million draw a government check of some sort.

 

          

In my lifetime, eighty-five years, I have seen America change completely. Just a small percentage of the population controls all the wealth (some say 1%.) Just a small percentage of the population pays all the taxes (some say 20%.) The middle class has largely become the working class, struggling for survival. The "talking box" in the living room, satanic fed desires for ease keeps from an early age, everyone dissatisfied with everything. The court house is over run by those with addictions. The school house has become a place for entertainment instead of education. The church house has become a battlefield for souls with the fight carried on from air-conditioned fox holes. Your house has become just a changing room or filling station. This world traveler (Doctor Morris' passport has been stamped in 157 countries, eight around the world trips... every continent) has see more commitment to false religions than committed-concerned-convinced-dedication to basic Christianity (in a so called Christian nation.) Most churches are just country clubs with steeples. In my days in speaking before civic clubs, I found more loyalty to civic club principles than I found at most Christian churches.

 

            I believe that the thing that bothers me the most, as most of us enjoy the comforts of 21st century living, just how little we appreciate what we have inherited... we are so busy picking flowers which we did not plant.  Never for one day has the poverty of my youth left my mind and not just me, all my family. We left the fundamental denomination of our forbearers of church house which did not have inside plumbing. We were embarrassed about our own homes, homes of love and understanding because of no inside plumbing... old drafty houses. We could not invite friends to our homes or our churches because they just might need to go to the bathroom. Most of our college educated friends had never seen an "out-house."

 

            This writer, like his parents-grandparents-great grandparents before him, followed his blessed Lord in baptism by being baptized in a fish pond (long before an inside baptistery was installed into our country church.) Women did not wear pant suites/slacks to church. Aunt Sarah who died at 98 would go around and use a safety pins to pin the girls dresses between their legs, so that the dresses would not rise up when they got into the pond. All believe in truth. Your truth is not necessarily my truth... your experiences are not my experiences. Our ancestors had not experienced the truth of inside plumbing, electric power, the bottomless ocean of technology. God forgive us for not appreciating them enough, for not celebrating the fact that they did the best they could with what they had.

           

            I participated at the funeral for the first graduate of the North Carolina State University, who died at one-hundred (N.M. Matthews, Goldsboro NC.) He and I would talk about the challenges of this new nation. My uncle turner told me about the first multistory, eight story, hotel building that went up in the county. Men carrying bricks and water, on their shoulders, up many feet to build that building. My great-grandfather wrote about his first experiences with electric lights, when he attended a baptist convention in Nashville, Tennessee. My own Grandmother and my relatives were land owners, talked about picking cotton  the day after her marriage. Can we even imagine the depths of poverty and despondency for the tenant farmers, the black people of that time in history. This writer still remembers studying the primitive medical instruments (still used until the beginning of the 20th century) at the UNC school of medicine, Chapel Hill. I will never understand my treatment as a totally blind, 100% disabled veteran. I will never understand my treatment by relatives who knew full well that I had worked very hard, lived a life of trust in God, to reach this time of disembarkation. I wonder how I would have been treated by my family-relatives-associates if I had been convicted of some crime and gone to prison. It suffices to say that most survivors who have reached the 21st century are just caught up in a world of me-ism.

            Most of us might go to God's house and sing such old Christian hymns as "Jesus keep me near the cross." When Jesus knows, we do not mean a word of it. The Christian religion is a supernatural religion. You can not be a Christian without believing in the supernatural. It is the supernatural love of God and love by God, which gives reality to life even in the 21st century. I so pity those who have no memories. I so pity those who have no hope for the future. Six hundred thousand Americans were killed in the great American Civil War. It was not that long ago, I have known family members who were alive during that time. They had the faith to keep on keeping on. I do believe that faith is ninety percent raw courage. This morning, eighty-fifth year my mind is clear, my body free of pain, ready to take the plunge into the depths of the river of reality. 

Mindset (2009)

Dr. Karl Menninger, founder of the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, died in 1990 (July 22, 1893 – July 18, 1990) at the age of 97. Menninger was probably one of the moving forces in psychiatric education in the United States. In the opening of Pandora's Box, with all the human debris which escaped and causes trouble, the last thing left in the box was hope. Menninger said, “Hope is a necessity for normal life and the major weapon against the suicide impulse.” In the famous love chapter of the Bible, (1 Corinthians 13) we are told about faith, hope, and charity. As important as it is for the human psyche to employ faith and love in our daily living I do not see how anyone can live without hope.

The launching pad for almost every human endeavor is hope. No matter how poor you are, you have hope for wealth. No matter how sick you are, you have hope for getting well. No matter how many times you attempt something, you have hope for success. Thomas Edison, with only a 6th grade education, gave to the world about 1000 inventions. Someone asked him, why he kept trying something which had failed so many times. He said, “At least I know those attempts will not succeed.”

The most fascinating study in the world is the development of children. At Purdue University as well as other educational facilities around the world, we find that a child is born a 23000 genome organism ready to soak up knowledge. The DNA molecule in the cell of every child (There are 14 billion cells in the human brain alone.) have thousands of pages of information involving the genetics of this one individual person.

In 1953, when I was a young student studying Cytology and the other subjects of the medical areas and Watson and Crick published their findings which I still think is the greatest discovery of the 20th century. I believed that many of the mysteries of learning skills, and certainly the myth of evolution, had been solved. It is only by learning through study and observation that we know what Aristotle knew hundreds of years before Christ, “The mind is a vast cosmos”

The mind that can imagine and put on paper a bestseller, the mind that can imagine and develop nuclear energy, the mind that can imagine and draw the plans for the Taj Mahal or the Eiffel Tower, the mind that can imagine and draw the blueprints for a 747 plane or space vehicle, such a mind lives with the warps and woof of daily family, financial, entertainment, or simple or complicated entanglements.

Most learning comes through vision. A child's eyes are not fully developed until the age of five, not ready for the complex activity of reading, but it is truly amazing how much a child learns by sight before the reading skills. When the Holy Spirit of God controls the mind, when Christ lives within this temple called the human body, our mind is different from that of a non-believer. We do what we do because we believe what we believe.

I hope the time will come, in my life, when the pretenders are weeded out and when if one professes Christianity he possesses Christ. One who possesses Christ, in mind and spirit, does the things that Christ would do. Christ would not vote for a Muslim, socialist, liberal extremist, the greatest promoter of child slaughter in the world today. Christ would not have in His cabinet a Sebelius, or a Napolitano, nor would he support a system of government headed by such atheists as a Pelosi or Kennedy. Christ would not have in His church a Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton or Adam Clayton Powell.

Many think this old blind doctor is extreme, but please prove to me that we do not have an epidemic of illegal drugs, pornography, the homosexual agenda of same-sex marriage, and pursuit of pleasure which has brought the very demons of hell into every living room of America where the idols of Hollywood are bowed down to by you and your children, not for just a little while but for hours at a time.

The financial world has been turned upside down, bankers, Wall street, economist in government actually believe that when you are completely broke “you can spend your way into prosperity.” The tried and true system of economics which made this country great, wealth which has eased the poverty all over the world as well as preserve liberty for most of the worlds citizens has been debunked.

Those of us, who worked for a living (in spite of disability, limited education, the shame of bigotry) believed in paying our way. When we wanted something we worked until we had the money to pay for it, whether a pair of shoes or an automobile. I did not see my first credit card until 1960. Last year, I received 59 credit card applications. Satan, and these satanic powers of government has enslaved us all and in our stupor of ignorance to the knowledge of God's word and the sanity purchased by our freedom on battlefields around the world we have totally lost our minds.

Thank God, I was raised at a time and in a home where we knew the honor of hard work, where we only bought things we could afford, where we knew the dignity of doing without. Where we had the ambition for wealth and things, but had the integrity to acquire them righteously. For eight years, I worked honorable, honest jobs at night and went to classes at the university during the day. I did not have the clothing, go to the parties, have the popularity of the elitist students. But, I graduated with my honorable degrees, commissioned as a medical officer for YOUR military service and gave my eyes for YOUR country. (My eyeballs are empty, there is no retina, nerves or anything) I returned home, decorated, and went to work doing what I could do in my condition. At 79, I have never stopped.

In these days of multi-million dollar homes which people cannot afford, my first house, a simple duplex, cost 9,000 dollars. I lived on the one side and let the rent from the other side pay for it. Then, I bought another, then another, etc. You can get a copy of my biographical information, it has been published in several magazines, written by the university, in which I described how I have saved 50 cents of every dollar I have ever made investing this money in the stock market and real estate. Saving, investing, living frugally, is a mindset. Most of you would not do it. Just as most of you went to the polls and voted for a Holocaust, a national financial dilemma, politicians who do not have the morals of an alley cat, politicians who vote to end the most precious creation of God's imagination the marriage of a man and woman and their production of a family. Those of you who would vote for people who put out a manual stating that the terrorist of this country (associating us with members from the KKK, black Panthers) are veterans who have fought for this country, preachers of the gospel, (those who are anti-abortion and those who are opposed to same-sex marriage).

I have friends and relatives who will probably never speak to me again because I have told them, in no uncertain words, that it is not for me to judge them but God has already judged them and will hold them accountable for supporting and voting for such decadence. “Before the LORD; for he cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the world, and the people with equity.” (Psalm 98:9)

On this day of national prayer, which since 1952, has been observed by every president except this Muslim president for which many of you voted. The only hope I can offer you is the hope found in the redemption of Jesus Christ. It is all a mindset, the mindset of the politician, to get re-elected and squeeze every advantage, monetary and otherwise, out of his election. The mindset of the liberal pastor, TV evangelist, so-called Christian educator to compromise and rationalize every Christian principle to ensure him a good life, the mindset of the pagan, eat drink be merry, lie cheat and steal, there are more of us than them, and our only fear is getting caught here on earth.

Hope for the Best, Prepare for the Worst

The word "big" does not begin to describe Boeing, a global aviation leader and the world's second largest military contractor. Nearly 12,000 Boeing jetliners command the skies. Today, the company has 150,000 employees in 49 states and 70 countries and reported revenues of $66.4 billion in 2007, with 40 percent from overseas. It has been long a symbol of the Seattle economy. Boeing (BA) CEO Jim McNerney is eager to move the company to China. Whether moving Boeing to China means shifting its headquarters from Chicago to Beijing is up in the air. But Boeing already has $600 million in supplier partnerships with China -- such as a deal with Shenyang Aircraft Corporation. Can one even imagine the Northwest area decimated by the moving of Boeing as compared to Detroit and the decimation of the automobile industry.

Yesterday, the stock market reached the magical 10,000 mark. From over seas and elsewhere, it is believed that the American recession may be on the way out. Even if improvements are shown in industry and banking, unemployment will still lag far behind; because the average employer, large or small, is afraid to take a risk in unpredictable times. Markets will go up in bad times and in good times. But, it is in times of the unexpected that people refuse to take risks. I remember very well the day the market reached 3000. I thought it was something I would never see and then my total bewilderment when it reached 13,000. It is a matter of elementary physics that things will go down much more rapidly than they will go up.

Thankfully, I spent the first years of my life, with parents who always prepared for a “rainy day.” My entire life has been in preparation for a long monsoon season, living frugally, saving everything not throwing away anything. Conservatism is not a political posture. It is a matter and manner of life. This great country was built by conservatives. Those who saved and were able to invest, those who valued the trees in the forest, those who valued the water as well as the water ways, are the true patriots of the plateaus.

Parents, politicians, pastors, can wear a “mask” of concern, but it is in our very “guts” that we learn the stability of actions. You can fool some people some of the time, but you cannot fool everyone all the time. The real essence of your commitment will eventually show itself. The famous song, “Let there be Peace on Earth and let it begin with me” can apply to every area of life. If you want to meet your best psychiatrist, look in a mirror. I learned long ago that I could not do much to change other people. But changes in me would help other people. The greatest government program, the greatest spiritual experience is at the end of my arms, my own hands and what I can do with them. The greatest change in my life comes from putting one foot in front of the other, walking away from temptations and problems, walking towards opportunities for service and personal development.

If you are capable of discernment, if you can think for yourself, you are not a failure. It's up to you. Believe me, others may say they are concerned about you. They may even tell you that they will pray for you. But, generally speaking, it is up to you, you and the God who created you. It is very trite, even so far, found on our money “Trust in God”. I firmly believe that if you were to ask any person who has gone on from this life regardless of destination, what they would have done differently, you would get the same answer, “Trust in God.” Anytime I made a wrong decision, without exception, it was because I depended on myself. I have used this in every graduation address I have ever given. “I have failed God many times, but he has never failed me.”

Learn early, there will be a pay day, some day. The song is right, “This world is not our home. We are just passing through.” Our citizenship is in heaven. We are strangers and pilgrims here. (I Peter 2:11) If you are totally committed to Christ, do not expect your parents, your siblings, even perhaps your wife or children to understand you.

As you age, you will find that you have hoped for the best, but prepared for the worst in your relationships. It is very easy for children to cut off the machinery keeping you alive, toward the end because you have become terribly expensive and a real bother in their lives. Besides, the more of your estate you take up in your final care, the less there is for them to fuss over.

A person's interest controls their thinking. If you live for sex, sex is what you get. If you live for athletic contests, athletic contests on television or on the field, is what you get. If you live for food, food and all the dietary complications are what you get. If you live for drugs, legal or illegal, alcohol and dependency of every type is what you get. If you live for money, what it has bought and what it has cost you is what you have left.

You are not stuck where you start. Only you and you alone know where you need to change. Believe me, very few, actually care about you. Graveyards get very few visitors. One of the finest doctors I ever knew, a true college friend, one who felt he could share with me his most inner thoughts came to me before he killed himself. He told me he had been very successful in everything except his marriage. Spiritually, he could not bring himself to walk away from his family; because he knew that his wife would keep his children and most of his property. It was a sad moment when I learned of his suicide. It was a sad moment last week, when I learned of the suicide of a Baptist pastor in the western part of NC. I still remember the dreadful day as a member of the board of deacons, we walked into the church ahead of the casket of the Chairman of the Board of Deacons who had committed suicide.

It is only when you put a plug into the wall socket and you make the electrical connection which gives the energy or light you need that you are connected with the source. It is essential to be connected with the source, your only hope in all preparations. Victory in your life depends on connecting with the source of all power.

Two of my friends, two of the more outstanding men in this city, died last year, victims of suicide. One a remarkable surgeon, the other a very successful businessman, but left families. They had reached the “end of their line.” I wish they had come to me, and old blind veteran, and talked first. Life is a trip, not a destination, the scripture tells us it is a race, with a finish line. When we cross the finish line, we will be battered, many of us will limp across. Character determines destination...righteousness is the greatest evidence of character. With the safety and sanctity of the Holy Spirit of God in our hearts, regardless of problems, we can endure to the end.