Earth Day

In case you have not noticed, your world has gone completely crazy. Nikolai Lenin was born on April 22, the first Earth Day was April 22, 1970, is it not strange that most of the silliness and madness the last quarter of the 20^th century took place after the ridiculous presidency of the peanut farmer from Georgia who thought was our worst president. Can we only imagine what will happen after the Sunni Muslim in the White House leaves?

The man who claimed to be the founder of Earth Day (Ira Einhorn) went to prison for life for the killing of his wife. Go to the attached link (http://youtu.be/G880gxjj9dI) and watch these fools crying and carrying on because of the death of a tree. I wonder what our forefathers would have thought of such, since it was necessary to cut down many trees in order to build the buildings, bridges, barricades which have made this country great, and by burning wood has warmed its many inhabitants. How well I remember my father being prepared to go to the woods with his sons to cut down trees for use in our wood cook stove and in our wood heaters in the house to keep us from freezing in the winter. How well I remember the logs pulled from the wood lands, sawed into timber in the mills for the building of sheds to house God's work animals and cows on which the nation depended. You see, for the young people, there was a time when there were no electronics, not even light bulbs.

This “Earth Day”, “green” malarkey has about the run the insane course. Just yesterday, I heard a woman from Tuscan, Arizona, praying to the Catalina mountains. The good earth, the world over has given to mankind what God intended, soil for nourishment and the production of the things we need. The cattle on a thousand hills are His. The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. (Psalm 24:1)

Traveling the world, I have been amazed at the difference in soils. In the vastness of Africa's Sahara desert, I proved to myself and the world again that at one time the Sahara was covered with foliage. I paid some African youngsters for a petrified plant, which in the shifting sands, they had dug out of the desert many feet down, a desert covered with petrified plants. At the south pole, one young scientist out of the ice cold water was gathering lichens, algae, fungi, plant life. High in the Himilayas, I found berries. I remembered Dr. Singh, the missionary, who, with his guide about to freeze to death, had stopped to rest a minute. In the bushes beneath the cliffs, they heard cries. Dr. Singh said, “I must go and help.” His guide said, “we are almost dead, we should move on.” But the doctor went anyways, dragging the man out of the bushes and back to a nearby village which they had left. His activity, his work in saving this man kept him alive, whereas his guide, staying still, doing nothing, froze to death.

We live in a world of mobility, building gardens, parks, but never taking time to look at the greenery there. We want instant coffee, instant relief, fast food, fast service, fast cars and rapidly progressing children. Within every block of marble, there is a sculpture but it does not jump out rapidly, it takes the artist a long time to accomplish beauty. After Michelangelo had finished his sculpture Moses, so life-like, he hit the bottom with a hammer and said, “speak to me.” A wonderful painting does not just appear on a large canvas, slow talented strokes, every petal, leaf of a plant, every shingle on a building, every caress of material, before you have a canvas of honor for the creator.

So it is with wisdom, knowledge, no shortcuts. There was a time when an academic, attaining a Ph.D in a subject, no matter how large or how extensive, was the world's authority in that subject. In his written presentation, he gave the academic requirements that he had studied everything known about the subject, that he had all the knowledge for his limited area of attainment. We have settled for shortcuts, too many doctorates purchased either from a catalog or nice financial contribution to an institution.

In the famed TV series, I Love Lucy, Ethel and Lucy got a job working in a candy factory, filling boxes with candy. The pieces of candy were coming down the assembly line so fast that their hands would not fill the boxes fast enough. They were forced to eat some of the candy, put some in their pockets, but the boxes did get filled. American commercialism and consumerism is built around quickness, competition, the increase in production, factory or farm, no time for the fields to be watered by God, there must be irrigation. Chickens, pigs raised on mesh and mash, genetically-modified so they are just eating and drinking. Dairy cows milked three times a day, everything both genetically and mechanically. Even the milk goat, trained to jump on a platform at just the right time, head in a noose, eating while mechanically milked, artificially inseminated, goats preferred because they always have at least two babies. Cows butchered if not productive.

All of God's creatures, like God's schoolchildren, just herded from one stable to another, performing fast, never taking the time to enjoy anything about life or living. When my ancestors and their sons went into the woodlands with their crosscut saw, a saw used by two men to cut down and cut up trees, trees used for cooking, heating, building, we still took time to hear the birds, the wildlife. My father could call quail within a few yards because he knew the whistle.

The greatest creation of God, the human being. I love the Catholic Church because of its emphasis on the Cross, forever the symbol of love. On my five mile walk from Jerusalem to Jericho, I could not help but think of the story of the Good Samaritan, the twelve verses of scripture which tells us the importance of important actions (Luke 10:25-37)