Ambiguity

A member of the United States Senate of Foreign Relations Committee said recently when answering an inquiry about if the US would honor its treaties with Taiwan, the member said, “We want our policy about these treaties to be a matter of ambiguity.” In other words, as is the premise of all Democrat politicians, promises are made to be broken. The word of the United States is no longer dependable.

On one of my several trips to India, I was put in a boat by my guide and we went onto the holy Ganges river where he could describe the religious rituals as well as the many cremations taking place on the banks of the river. This was at Benares, considered a holy city by Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Senthoo. I have photographs, the only way anyone could describe the rituals at that river at sunrise. I want to speak, however, on what happened when I left the river.

After getting off the boat, of course a blind man has trouble walking anywhere, but it seemed that something was hanging onto my legs. I began to try to move it with my white cane. The guide said that these were “begging children”. He said, “Most have no feet, only one arm, they are professional beggars, put here by their masters who stole them from villages, chopped off part of their limbs, and used them for begging. Any tourist who comes here as you have today, is immediately seized upon and if I want to continue as a guide, there is not much I am allowed to do about it.”

The only thing I can remember about the hotel in Benares, was the large ceiling fans everywhere, but the guide did bring me an old religious man, member of the Jain system (these are the ones who put their dead up on racks to be eaten by the vultures), I asked him to tell me about the begging children. I had seen children with “begging bowls” all over the world, but this was a new decadence. The old man, provided a shelter where he kept those so mistreated that they could not survive, until they died. He told me an incident, which I reported to the group in NY to which I belong (Volunteer Services for Children, a group that provides shelters for abandoned children throughout the world).

He said that one child was brought to him about three years of age whose feet had been partially chopped off by the child’s own father so that he could make money for the him. He said however the feet had refused to heal and that even when the father brought the child to him to die the child held on to the father, that the child cried for his father each night, that when the father came checking on the child just before the child’s death, the child revived and went to crying, Poppa. He said, “there is no ambiguity about the love of a child for a father, regardless of horrendous mistreatment.”

One of my cousins, one of the first pastors I can remember as a child, whose funeral I attended, a preacher of 75 years. Among the crowd was the governor's mother, when the deceased last visited me, we talked of the orphanage which he superintended during WWII, assisted by other members of my family. I remember that he said he had a budget of 10,000 dollars a year to maintain 80 children. Of course the orphanage had a farm where most of their food was raised, but Rev Dr. James Evans (I give an award in his honor each year) was a phenomenal person. He told me, a well known judge had taken from an abusive father a small child and had instructed that the child be placed in his care at the orphanage. He said, “When the father brought the child to my house at the orphanage the child so clung to the abusive father who had beaten him, starved him, and was anything but a loving father.” He still had to pry the child’s fingers from his holding on to this father. He said, “No more then one can understand the loyalty of an abused animal to its owner, can one understand the “bond”, the genetic adhesive between a child and a parent, regardless of abuse. There is no ambiguity.”

When young and energetic in spite of my handicap, I was always doing what I could but my only contact with others was mostly by hearing. At a church luncheon, I was sitting at a table with two very elderly ladies, one was 86, had never married until she became to disabled to work, had sold cloth at a local department store (Efirds department store) her entire life, had been a member of the church since the age of six and had sat in the same pew at the church for 80 years. She said to the other lady who was equally as old, “It is almost over, I can hardly wait.” The other said, “I know we are going to be so happy over there.” There was no ambiguity between these two, dedicated, redeemed Christians about their future.

I owned a condo apartment in NYC for many years in the central part of the city on a street called Beekman Place (right across the street from the home of Irving Berlin). When in the city, about one week a month, I attended the 5th avenue Presbyterian church, one of the world's great churches. Of course, as everywhere else, no one paid any attention to a disabled person, as with most people, I sat in the same pew each time. I know an older lady sat directly behind me because I could always hear her talking with someone.

The most remarkable thing I ever overheard in a church and something which every church member should remember. She said, “I have been coming here sitting in this same seat for over 50 years. Last month, one morning, I decided to sit up in the balcony just to observe what the church was like from that viewpoint.” She said, “the only time that people in the church ever paid attention to me, the church office called to inquire if I had died. Someone in the choir had noticed that I was not in my usual seat.” There is no ambiguity, that as we get older, that as we become more unattractive, that as we become disabled we become just a fixture, only missed, like a burned out light bulb.

God alone knows our worth in the past and knows the tragedy of those who consider our life experiences as being worthless to everyone except Him. When Jesus washed His disciples feet, His last act of love to each individually (He even washed the feet of Judas who would, with a kiss, for the price of a hog, would betray Him) he asked if they understood what He had done. He was and is our servant redeemer. There was no ambiguity in anything He did on this earth.

O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee,
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

George Matheson