Looking Through A Keyhole

Looking Through A Keyhole

            This writer, world traveler, well remembers the Kalahari salt flats in Botswana (back then I had a small amount of eyesight), seeing lions, low in the bush ready to attack a herd of wildebeests when stampeding, at the sight of the lions, leaving behind the most vulnerable: their young and the disabled.  Every morning a lion awakens knowing that he must run faster than the slowest,  sickest wildebeests in order to eat and survive. Every the wildebeests must wake up knowing that he must run faster than the fastest lion in order to survive without being eaten.

            In my lifetime the gold posts for politicians, pastors, parents have been moved. Even those who at one time walked on red carpets, the elitist of the world, those who had a veneer of the social graces (taste in literature, music, language) have all sought the lowest common denominator. I well remember the time that descendents of the wealthy and academics sought education facilities where the finer things of civilization were taught. Elitist parents of the state presented their daughters to society at large debutante balls. Young sons went to expensive "prep schools", knowing even then, the importance of networking (who you know not what you know). There are 233 Catholic colleges and Universities in America where spiritual values triumphed. Last year, the most famous Catholic University, Notre Dame, presented an honorary doctorate to the most famous abortion advocate in the world...Barak Obama. I wrote a protest letter to President Jenkins which he did not have the class to answer.

            In North Carolina, even in my lifetime, female students at Meredith Baptist College were not allowed to wear black patent leather shoes. The professors so afraid that a boy might look up a girl's dress. At Wake Forest Baptist, professors walking around with a ruler, male and females had to dance at least a foot from each other. At Duke, bull work of intellectual Methodist-ism (and we know what goes on at fraternity houses), lacrosse students arrested, accused of raping a black stripper who they had engaged for entertainment. These male students from wealthy "Yankee" homes knowing nothing of Duke's history of classism and conservatism, had the money to pay the exorbitant tuition. 

            Again, this writer, traveler, Milan Italy, I saw the original da Vinci, "Last Supper" painting. He went on the streets of Milan to find people who fit his idea of the subjects in this painting (a painting which shows everyone eating at one side of a table). The most difficult model to find, Judas. He went on about other things and then after about 10 years he decided to finish his "Last Supper" painting...perhaps his most famous. He went to a prison and there found a man that matched his reflections on Judas. At the studio, the artist's model representing Judas kept looking at the painting. Finally, he said to da Vinci one day, "Don't you remember me? Ten years ago I posed a the model for Jesus." Perhaps this tells us what can happen to a person or a world in a period of ten years. The neurosis of the human mind has always bothered me, particularly the mean-evil mind. I can think of nothing any worse than the abuse of children. I still remember children in the small country school which I attended, Great Depression, half starved, wearing the signs of beatings by parents. I still remember the un kept girl in my fourth grade class, obviously hungry (this was before the time of lunchrooms-cafeterias). At lunch time we would get our lunch boxes to eat. Someone would bring Ms. Champions lunch from the teach ridge (a building where the teachers lived, had their meals, prepared a hot lunch for them at noon). She, knowing the hunger of the child would always embarrass her by sharing her lunch with her. There were always boys who showed the "marks" of an angry father or mother. (Remember, this was a segregated all white school.) Before the time of television, social attitudes, children-wives-elderly, endured the struggles for survival of tenant farmers-mill workers, people who took our their frustrations on family, helpless work animals.

            The information age-television-radio-newsprint makes everyone aware of brutality in the world. Not just the holocaust when millions of Jews were systematically brutalized and killed but the 275,000 disabled Europeans killed by Hitler before the Jews because they were just eaters, not producers.  Hitler's brown shirts, Nazi Gestapo, promised the Jews freedom at the cost of work. The disabled exterminated because "they know they are better off, would not want to live in their condition." How many times a sighted person has made such a statement to me, a sightless person? ("I would not want to live blind.")

            Hardest hearts often have soft spots. 1914, WWI, harshest battle, Christmas Eve, in a no man's land in between front line trenches of the opposing forces, both sides took time to celebrate Christmas. During their cease fire they shared food, showed photographs of children to each other, even sang together. Then, as quick as it had started, an officer fired two shots and the war was back on again. Human being against human being, attempting to kill one another. All wars would end if opposing factions could get to know one another, their families, their lives, even their spiritual beliefs.

            In his book In Cold Blood, Truman Capote attempted to show the genesis of evil between men. Is it causality or coincidence, today's psychotropic drugs and the brutality of video games? We know that the mind of Christ is not found in very many. "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men" (Philippians 2:5-7).  Evil is costly for everyone concerned. Have you ever considered the time you worked because of lackadaisical attitude of your fellow man towards evil? It is like the paradox of people who live lives of appetite denial so they can be taxed exorbant to pay for the joint replacements of those who do not care how much they eat, putting on the excess weight that slowly destroys their joints...allowing manufactures to put sugar (most addictive cause for cancer) in everything they put into their bodies. 

            I was one of the first Americans into the Central African Republic after Bokassa...declared himself emperor, riding the street of Bangui (the capital), in a chariot like a Roman emperor. In another article I have described going to the palace (moat) where he fed his enemies to crocodiles. Today, just announced, 3,000 children under 18, boys and girls, in the children's army of the country-fighting and killing. Which is worse??? President, USA, 53 million abortions, killing the most innocent of life, 10 year Middle East War, drones dropping bombs on civilian mother's and children, the evil of child pornography in magazines or child pornography on front battle lines?