Empathy

The first time I realized and recognized the true significance of empathy was at a toastmasters' club meeting. The word empathy means “the capacity to recognize and share feelings that are being experienced by another [human being].” It has been a long time, and I do not know if toastmasters' clubs are now in existence, but 60 years ago, toastmasters' clubs were important in every community. In these clubs, men (mostly young men) learned to communicate, articulate themselves, learned the craft of speech-making.

I was a member of a toastmasters' club, among its membership, professionals (lawyers, doctors, teachers), military officers, people who needed to learn to express themselves before others, especially aspiring politicians. A middle-aged man came to our group from a nearby small county. He was one of the most humble persons I have ever known. He had done well in business, and was now encouraged to run for political office. He wanted to run for a seat in the NC legislature; he did run and was elected. He was a product of the North Carolina school system and in spite of his wants and needs, he had been given very little remedial education; he simply did not know the meaning of words or how to use them.

I was caught up in the empathy of what he was trying to do, having known so many relatives and good, honest people who had the desire to serve, yet were “crippled” by inadequate preparation in public schools. He simply could not express himself, get his thoughts across to an audience...an intelligent audience would have made a mockery of him! It was the club's mission to courageously and correctly help him, through tender care. He learned through criticism, was not antagonized by those who wanted to help him.

The greatest fear of most people is the fear of speaking in public. Before the time of self-help development books, Dale Carnegie courses, talk-radio shows, such programs as toastmaster's, pilot clubs for women, only the college-trained, classic debaters of the university-type possessed the courage to speak before a group. Like the great education governor, Charles Brantley Aycock (1901-1905), spurred on to improve his education and the education of others by seeing his mother, who could not write, make her “mark” on a deed”, I heard my father say he wished he had the education to express himself before a group.

I first realized the number of honest citizens who wanted to serve their country, their fellow man, when I worked with the WRO (Welfare Right's Organization) of the early 1960s. These were the disenfranchised, mostly-black, almost always poor, products of the despicable eastern North Carolina education system, just trying to improve their lot in life. Cotton-mill workers, tenant farmers, day-laborers, moving through the eastern counties, working in green tobacco, produce markets, hand-picking cotton, they knew that they were not sharing in the American experience, the so-called “American dream”. They knew that their children would never have the opportunities planned by our forefathers. They knew that the American Constitution did not apply to them. They knew that they were the victims.

The owner of a furniture manufacturer told me without any hesitation (his son was in the legislature, one of the good ol' fraternity boys at the university when I was there) that he would shut down his factory before he would yield to any of our health-safety demands. One of my aunts went to the owner of the Spaford cotton mill, Mr. Davis, about washing the windows so that more light would come in, and they could see better to do their work. She was told that if she did not like the working conditions, she could find another job. This was the 20^th century eastern North Carolina mentality: rule by the Democrat party, keeping the people poor and ignorant, but still enticed to vote the straight Democrat ticket.

I ceased my activity with the Welfare Right's Organization when Mr. Saul Alinsky (Rules For Radicals) hitched these groups to the civil rights, black desegregation movement of the Lyndon Johnson administration. Now, 60 years later, there may be more rights, but the discrimination, disenfranchisement, racial attitudes are as bad as ever.

The bankers, the political powerbrokers, the Bilderbergers, the Satanic forces of the New World Order are as evident as ever. Islam is the mindless mass that will assist the New World Order in gaining control of the earth. Many Muslims countries are aflame; three hot wars, some cold ones. China, supplying Pakistan with planes, holding 40% of total US debt, is in the driver's seat (If the US debt was calculated with today's figures, not as presently calculated with figures of 30 years ago, the debt would be $75 trillion, not $14 trillion...a debt which is un-payable).

We have brief interludes in our nation's plight, such as that of brother Camping, who is solving the problem for many of us, the Rapture of Christians to the glory of Christ. Interesting that most snickering unbelievers/pretenders think they will be part of the group. I think that even Mr. Camping would assure you that Christ is not returning for a prostitute: those with one foot in the church house, one foot in a house of worldly pleasure. Christ is not returning for those who think they have some fire insurance, “just in case there is something to this thing called religion”.

We are children of light (1 Thessalonians 5:4), walk as children of light, not as the thief of darkness, stand as a defender of right. Get ready to speak for your faith, to defend the absolutes of right. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear (1 Peter 3:15).