Waxed Fruit

"This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine.

This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine.

This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine.

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

All around the neighborhood, I'm going to let it shine.

All around the neighborhood, I'm going to let it shine.

All around the neighborhood, I'm going to let it shine.

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Hide it under a bushel? No! I'm going to let it shine.

Hide it under a bushel? No! I'm going to let it shine.

Hide it under a bushel? No! I'm going to let it shine.

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Don't let Satan [blow] it out! I'm going to let it shine.

Don't let Satan [blow] it out! I'm going to let it shine.

Don't let Satan [blow] it out! I'm going to let it shine.

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine."

How long would you keep hoping to find a missing wallet? A week? A month?

And even if you found it, would you expect your money to still be inside?

One man got an extraordinary surprise when his wallet came back to him after 14 years missing — and stuffed with more cash than before.

“First I thought that someone was joking with me so I went to check whether the money was real,” Croatian man Ivica Jerkovic told the Croatian outlet 24 sata on Friday.

It was.

“It was the best greeting for Easter!” Jerkovic said.

His wallet came to the post office in a plain package, and the sender did not reveal their identity, but Jerkovic has a theory.

He believes that when he lost his wallet 14 years ago — stuffed with 2,000 German marks, or roughly $1,200, for home repairs — someone who desperately needed the money found it.

“I believe that this money saved him and for years he was calculating how much he should return to me,” Jerkovic said. “Otherwise, I don’t know why he would keep the wallet for all those years!”

When Jerkovic received his long-lost wallet last week, it contained 1,500 Swiss francs, or about $1,530.

 Jerkovic praised the mystery person who returned his wallet for their care in keeping track of the interest.

“I call on him to contact me,” Jerkovic said. “He is the best personal banker in Croatia.”

This writer was on a photography safari in Botswana, Africa. Earlier, I had purchased in the Sudan a most remarkable ruby stone in a gold setting. I thought it was valuable, but until I returned home and had it appraised, I did not know how valuable.

Anyway, I had put the ring in my camera bag. One morning, my guide said to me " Doctor, I found this ring near your tent, do you think it is yours, did you lose it?" Someway, somehow, in taking one of my cameras out of the bag I had misplaced the ring, and the guide had found it. Of course, it meant nothing to him and I thanked him profoundly. He did not realize how much money he had held in his hand.

And, so it is with our lives. In the marvelous book The Godfather. The last words of the Godfather before he died, "Life is so beautiful." We spend our lives thinking that waxed fruit, artificial flowers, veneer on cheap wood, is beautiful. There is nothing the creator designed that can be duplicated. Satan always pays off with counterfeit.

It is so refreshing to find human-beings who are good for goodness sake... People who want to do good because it makes them feel good. Such as returning to someone something that they've lost... Whether valuable or invaluable. The genuineness of life is good, whether from the smell of fresh fruit, fresh flowers, or even the yapping of a puppy. Why should the world be consumed by greed, whether a politician, business man, or even a family member. Children who ate their meals their entire life with their feet under the same table, often get so insanely grieved-greedy toward one another when their hard working parents estate is settled. When you get my age, eighty-five, like the Godfather, you realize just how beautiful a life with honesty can be.

Several years ago, I gave to one of my cousins a fruit bowl that had come from his great grandmothers dining room table. The beautiful bowl had come down to me and I wanted someone in my family to have it. I so remember waxed fruit in the bowl when I was a small child. She had said to me, "Thomas, the fruit in that bowl is just for looking, not for eating." I still remember the owner of a furniture factory saying to me, "I can take any cheap wood and with a veneer, make it look like expensive wood." I still remember, like a fool, standing in line with other Buddhists, in a temple in Sri Lanka to look at a tooth that supposedly come out of Buddha's mouth. It is so easy to be fooled "fooled by fakery." Please god, here at the sunset of my life, let me know the joy of real things, real people. Not waxed figures like those I saw in Madame Tussauds Museum.

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