The Inner Life

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,
     And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
     When I put out to sea,

  But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
     Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
     Turns again home.

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The greatest chasm in the world is that great distance between what we know and what we do. It is like that 14 inches, perhaps the greatest distance between the heart and the brain. Christians know their own poverty, they just look to Jesus for their needs.

It is a week like this that we realize again just how fragile life really is. There are 20 million legal gun sales each year.

Try this in a real conversation with someone, “Can you tell that my life shows that I am a real follower of ‘the way’?” The man who did the slaughter of so many people in Las Vegas was said, by his own family, not to have any real religious convictions or interested in politics. He had evidently escaped in this so-called Christian nation, every evidence of integrity and morality, and we continue to ask, “Why are so many human beings killed in a slaughter such as this, or the every week slaughter in Chicago?” Once, in Korea, where the weather can get so cold (during the Korean War, near the Chosin reservoir, dead-frozen American bodies were stacked like cordwood, it was said that one man went into the mountains where he found most of the people barefoot. He asked the question, “Why don’t you people have shoes in this cold and ice?” One said, “It takes money to buy shoes, and we do not have money.” He said, “Do you not have a job?” “Oh,” the other replied, “We all have jobs. We work in a shoe factory.” And so it is in this land of the free, home of the brave, as our president said, “Criminal evil and most church people are not very concerned.” What the eye does not see, those in the pews and pulpit do not grieve over. For several generations, we have taught our young people to be nice, to be tolerant, to be politically correct… Facts do not matter, it is only feeling and fairness that count. We try to make Jesus a man of the age we live in, God has not promised to forgive one sin you are not willing to forsake and many times we must reach down further than we are willing to go… Encouragement, forgiveness.

Carl was a 24-year-old, very intelligent young man, who came to work for me. He was very upfront about his illness, the fact that he had AIDS, this was in the beginning of the AIDS epidemic… People knew very little about the bacteria. I believe the strangest question anyone ever asked me, he asked me after he had talked with me about his impending death, “Would you help me to commit suicide?”

I could well understand Carl’s dilemma, once a favorite among his friends, now shunned by everyone, including his own family. He said he went to visit his sister, and she kept his glass and dishes apart from her others, so afraid, was she of catching his disease. When Carl died in a hospital, his mother called me that she was having such difficult time finding a funeral home to bury the body. She found a local mortician in a small nearby town, who said they would come and put the body in a casket, and bury it, but would have nothing to do with the services or even embalming, so Carl was buried in a grave, still very much alone… No family, no friends, in attendance.

Another good friend, Katherine (Katherine Vasolue), I met because we were both great talk-show addicts… Talking on talk-shows coast to coast. Larry King, the famous talk-show host, said Katherine was the brightest female he had ever known. Katherine was an only child, born blind, she went to the school for the blind and onto to graduate at two universities. She returned here, her home, so she could care for her aging mother and father (he, a WWII veteran). She supported her family by working at a local hospital, typing records. She would go home and care for her parents until their deaths. I asked her once, “Did anyone in this town ever do anything for you or your parents in that long time of sickness?” She said that when her mother died, one church brought by some food, and the local newspaper took up a collection to help bury her mother… Never anything at Christmas, or any holiday. She said I have already given my lawyer and the funeral home instructions, “When I die there is to be nothing. No services, anything. Just bury me next to my parents.” And that is what happened… One of the brightest women I ever knew, bringing joy to millions coast to coast, by her very spectacular voice on the radio. Katherine had a seeing-eye dog named Elma. One day, one of our fine citizens, hit with her car, Katherine and Elma in the street, killed Elma, the car never even slowed down.  

Our values-inspirations are so confused. We just had the world’s oldest and richest pimp die (Hugh Hefner). I was amazed at this purveyor of pornography was so remembered in such a grand and glorious way by news media. We are so concerned about our social standing at cocktail parties, our houses, our cars, the clothing we wear. In one of our state’s largest stores, labels would be cut out of expensive clothing so they could be attached to cheaper clothing, so important is an appearance, social standing, the need to impress. The people in Las Vegas, or even Afghanistan, the mortality rate is still 100%. We are all going to die, the only thing left behind; our culture.