Cardinal with Purple Stripes

“Deliver me, O Jesus:

From the desire of being esteemed

From the desire of being loved

From the desire of being honored

From the desire of being praised

From the desire of being preferred to others

From the desire of being consulted

From the desire of being approved

From the desire of being popular.

Deliver me, O Jesus:

From the fear of being humiliated

From the fear of being despised

From the fear of being rebuked

From the fear of being slandered

From the fear of being forgotten

From the fear of being wronged

From the fear of being treated unfairly

From the fear of being suspected

And, Jesus, grant me the grace

To desire that others might be more loved than I

That others might be more esteemed than I

That in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I decrease

That others may be chosen and I set aside

That others may be preferred to me in everything

That others may become holier than I, provided that I, too, become as holy as I can.” 

                                                  (Mother Theresa, A Simple Path)

You want to raise a child not just with the absence of pathology but with the presence of virtue. How many times have I heard a parent say that he or she is a good kid when I knew they were as rotten as they could get. I always felt when I met a nice boy or girl...polite, industrious, the greatest compliment I could give a parent is "you have done a good job".

We are all just a car crash away, just a choking from a piece of meat away, just a strike of lightning away from eternity. Like finding a canary with purple stripes, we just don't think it will happen to us. Those of you who are sighted when you look in the mirror, it is always you. Those of us who are blind have no use for a mirror. Purple striped canaries could fly all around us and we would know nothing about it. and, mentally sick, deranged evil people, young and old are all around us and we want to pretend that they are not there; schoolhouse, courthouse, church house, even your house. Where did the people come from that fill our prisons? And they are the ones that got caught.

Every human being, from the beginning of time, is an individual. Of the 7 billion people living on earth today not another 1 is like you...even identical twins. You have a soul/assigned a guardian angel. The best surgeon in the world, using the sharpest scalpel cutting your body into very small pieces and using the most powerful microscope, cannot find your soul. Your soul is you given to you by God. The difference in the specie homosapiens from other species of animal life, both with back bones and without back bones, We have a mind and a soul, we know we are going to die. We have a brain of trillions of cells multiple trillions of synapses, can we even imagine someone killing the most magnificent creation of God, whether abortion or murder? What does a worm or termite "think" as he looks at 1 of us? And yet, we have evil, mentally sick people who will kill 1 of us as if we are a paramecium or housefly.

There is no such thing in the world as a purple striped canary, only the human mind could imagine one. No mother would believe that her sweet, innocent child, black or white, privileged or poor, smart or stupid, would mature to kill anyone, and yet, in this "so called" christian nation, our prisons are full of criminals.

Many years ago, your writer, world traveler (passports stamped in 157 countries ,8 round the world trips including both poles) went on a gorilla photography safari into mid-Africa...the Congo. My God told me, advised me ahead of time that I would be protected by Pygmies "real small people"; no education-never shoes-never  hygiene. Their fellow man in Africa actually roast them on fire and eat them. I went to a thrift store before I left and bought many used, college t-shirts, used advertising ball caps as gifts for them.My God said, "this is the greatest day of their life". I got into a wasp nest and they completely covered me, protecting me from stings". We invaded the gorilla  habitat but they were civil about the whole thing, much more than the wasps.

We live in a world where we mortgage tomorrow for today. We think that things are so important to us, cell phones/computers/bottomless ocean of technology.

The Holy Spirit of God wants no part in pride. We must get humble enough to pray for God's help with these tragedies such as the killing of school children. Every church should have special prayer, every civic club should have special programs about parenting because the value of life starts at the home.

During WWII even at our poor country church, a banner hung in the front of the church with a star for every boy in the community away at the war. Every church service those old people would go to the altar and pray for them. If 1 were killed  a gold star would be placed on the banner. At the end of WWII there was not 1 loss, not 1 gold star on the banner. We must approach the raising and maturing, preparation for life with its trials, of our young people the same way.