Appifiny of the Unwashed

#1745  All things by immortal power,
Near or far,	30
Hiddenly
To each other linkèd are,
That thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling of a star; -Francis Thompson

Henry Kissinger once said, "The boundaries of history have been marked by the masses of the unwashed."

This writer never takes a shower, never turns a faucet in the kitchen, without thanking God for water. What water means to life, both animal and plant. The fact that water has made the determining factor of almost every event in history. 70% of the Earths crust is covered by water, and makes up 70% of any animals body weight, water determining all plant life (mystery of the ages, routes in the soil, and the magnetism involved in water traveling even to the top of the tallest tree).

I never get out of the shower, without thinking that my ancestors never knew what it was to have a decent bath... The unwashed. 

This world traveler has seen unwashed people, the world over In Africa- Asia, Hundreds of men and women in rivers, beating their dirty clothing against rocks, washing their laundry in a river. 

From one side of the world to the other, people spending their day, with great jugs many times on their heads, transporting water from a creek to their home. 

As with characters in the bible, as with our ancestral forebears, to understand them, we must put flesh and blood on and in their bodies. I fully realize that today and in the 21st century, their are children born who never know their  parents, or knew their grandparents. 

Please God forgive those who do not have "precious memories," who do not have "family ties" to hold onto. 

I have all the empathy in the world, for the unwashed masses whose life is a struggle, in remote corners of the world, which God has blessed me to visit. I must remember, however, my own family. 

In-between the ancient farm homes of both my mother and father, my grandparents, and great- grandparents before them, a distance of about two miles, a curve in the dirt country road. In the grave yard at that curve, are the tomb stones of these, "saints of old" who I want to remember. 

Their were very few photographs back then, most of their ephemera (paper products), destroyed in their activity and just survival of daily life. People just did not prize old things. Every time this world traveler was near a monastery, I thought of the monk who found the sisters in 

Saint Catherine's Monastery

 at  Mount Sinai, burning old biblical scrolls, just trying to stay warm.

We think that God is tough. My ancestors were really tough. Think of their horror story, before leaving England, flaying to keep their Christian belief. Crossing the treacherous Atlantic in a small ship... Sick, some buried at sea. Landing on the shores of this promise land, near Morris town, NJ 1677. Battered by the sea and the New England winters. Think of what they encountered with their very few possessions, clothing- food- tools- medicine. But they eek out of existence out of the soil of New Jersey, founding Morris town. Then the hard working farmers moved south to North- Carolina. 

To show how tough they really were (and only a few family members know this). In my lifetime, few automobiles, cousin Barney, who owned a car, drinking liquor, drove his car into the ditch right there at the graveyard. His family had built our church in 1874, still there- still beautiful. His own family "kicked" him out of the church for drinking. So many times I wanted to tell his beautiful Christian wife and children (now dead and in Heaven), that story.

how things have changed at the church house, the school house, the court house, and all my relatives houses. Places which have had such a tremendous influence on my life. 

I still want to meet a perfect man, other than my blessed lord. My own "warts," "sins," though forgiven, still bother me. But even though we fail him, he never fails us. 

Not only did those folks buried in that graveyard, never have a decent bath, how they suffered from disease, not only wants but needs, at the one room school-house, which even my own mother attended, my grand-parents along with NC education governor Charles B. Aycock, they had to go to the woods and cut wood for the stove. Also buried in the graveyard, aunt Catty, the teacher... Uncle Turner, who once a year would go into a nearby town, and buy ice for everyone's once a year treat, ice-tea and ice-cream (July 4th celebrated at the school house). In the graveyard is my mothers 2 year old brother, who died from a dread disease. Until her death, my grand-mother thought every young boy looked like Seth. 

There is a long line of those in the graveyard who I can remember from stories which were told to me. Such stalwart ancestors, who knew nothing but handwork-hard times, and the all preserving power of God, will keep those of us who had it much easier, from complaining. They never heard a radio, but heard the voice of God from beautiful birds in the trees. They never saw a television set, but saw the hand of God in the lives of the sick and lonely. They never tasted "fast food" but knew the thrill from healthy- green- real food. They did not worry about diet or exercise, because farm work, walking most places, kept them in shape. 

In a world of political correctness, were the price of a soul is so cheap, God help us to remember the values of real Americans, real "Christ like" individuals. 

Independence Day 2010

My father was born on Independence Day 1910, if he were living today, he would be 100 years of age. We never celebrated his birthday, we were all too busy working, middle of summer, crops in the fields, gathering and gardening, too many responsibilities, schooling for children in the fall and college in the future, the needs of the church, putting something away for old age.

As far as I know, even though I know they paid their social security taxes including the excessive taxes on the farm land, neither of my parents ever collected a social security check. My mother died at 62, two weeks before she would have received her first check and two weeks after her last child had graduated from college. Besides, Senator Bailey had told my father that there was no money in the social security trust fund, just a big IOU. Both believed that Christians taking anti-Christian money caused an anti-Christian country.

My father had too much pride in his family ancestors, his work ethic, to ever take anything from the government. It was a matter of integrity, two of my ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence, Robert and Lewis Morris, founding Morristown, New Jersey, that side of the family moved north, my side moved south to North Carolina. Robert Morris wrote the preamble to the Declaration of Independence and later served as an ambassador to France. During then fighting there, he saw naked mens bodies dragged through the streets of Paris. He wrote of the uncivilized acts of man, man's inhumanity to man, such as in Mogadishu, Somalia (American soldiers pulled through the streets of this war-torn city, see the movie Black Hawk Down).

Every time I pass the home place of Dr. William Hooper of this city, I think of what he risked to sign the Declaration, the beautiful view from his home of the Atlantic ocean. All 56 signers having risked life, wealth and sacred honor. Lewis Morris lost everything and died in prison.

The oldest signer of the declaration, or at least the longest-living was Charles Carroll who died at 95. He was a lawyer, but was never allowed to practice law in this country because he was Roman Catholic. In spite of the inequities, then as now, they knew, and we should know, that as Dr. Franklin said, “Yes, we must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Three things my parents, grandparents, old people in our large farming community talked about their entire lives, and until they died, the Great Depression, Hurricane Hazel of 1954 (I was away in the military at that time), and the Fourth of July picnic. Across from the great home where my mother, her father before her, and his father before him were born and raised was a large, 4-room schoolhouse where my grandfather's sister, Aunt Cattie was the school teacher. Every fourth of July, the entire community would get together at the school for a big picnic. There was a large ball-field at the rear of the school building where they played ball all day. Under the trees in the front of the school, this building this setting is still there to this day, they put up tables for the meal of the year. My great uncle, who had never married, slept every night of his life in the house in which he was born, drove a team of mules into the nearest town and brought back a very expensive block of ice. This at a time when electricity was unknown ,was the only ice these people had all year. (Before electricity, ships would go to the Arctic and bring back loads of ice, the ice was stored in thick buildings, once such building is here on the river, just a block from my house. Wealthy families in the community had a refrigerated “icebox”. After electricity, ice was made from ice factories, by freezing water) He would shave the ice, for iced tea, milkshakes, and hand-churned ice cream.

Often, a politician would come by and make a speech, choirs from the local churches would sing. Everyone came, regardless of skin color, rich/poor, young/old, this is where many romances started. Each family had it's own flag which they brought to the picnic.

Now, there was segregation, discrimination, inequity, but these people, several denominations, separate schools, came together on such occasions, it was the same in the church. I still remember the divider which came down the center of the church building. The women sat on the left side of the divider, the men on the right side, the black people who worked on the farms, sat on the balcony. After couples reached a certain age, there was one section next to the pulpit, the “amen corner” where these old couples sat. The only service were men and women sat together, along with the blacks, was a funeral. They all came together at a time of sorrow, and they all came together at a time of joy.

They came together during the great flu epidemic of 1918 because they had to care for one another, the living had to bury the dead. The country doctor, Dr. Hayes, came with his buggy to care for them until he died of the flu, then they were on their own. People outside the community did not come into the community, because they could not afford to take the “bugs” back to their family and friends. Aunt Cattie died, along with several of her sisters, my mother's youngest brother died. This was the hard life of our ancestors, independent, hard-working, god-fearing, taking on the responsibilities of life, they knew what later generations have forgotten.

Next to creation by God alone, is the procreation of individuals, a man and woman coming together to produce one made in the image of God...completely different from any other individual who has ever lived. Even with identical twins, same DNA, there are different fingerprints, different flex in the iris of the eye, different voice patterns. God's chief creation, given with his freedom, ours to defend and enjoy (John 8:32-36).

Abraham Lincoln's Independence Day Address (July 4, 1963)

Fellow-citizens: I am very glad to see you to-night. But yet I will not say I thank you for this call. But I do most sincerely thank Almighty God for the occasion on which you have called.

How long ago is it? Eighty odd years since, upon the Fourth day of July, for the first time in the world, a union body of representatives was assembled to declare as a self-evident truth that all men were created equal. That was the birthday of the United States of America. Since then the fourth day of July has had several very peculiar recognitions.

The two most distinguished men who framed and supported that paper, including the particular declaration I have mentioned, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the one having framed it, and the other sustained it most ably in debate, the only two of the fifty-five or fifty-six who signed it, I believe, who were ever President of the United States, precisely fifty years after they put their hands to that paper it pleased the Almighty God to take away from this stage of action on the Fourth of July.

This extraordinary coincidence we can understand to be a dispensation of the Almighty Ruler of Events. Another of our Presidents, five years afterwards, was called from this stage of existence on the same day of the month, and now on this Fourth of July just past, when a gigantic rebellion has risen in the land, precisely at the bottom of which is an effort to overthrow that principle “that all men are created equal,” we have a surrender of one of their most powerful positions and powerful armies forced upon them on that very day.

And I see in the succession of battles in Pennsylvania, which continued three days, so rapidly following each other as to be justly called one great battle, fought on the first, second and third of July; on the fourth the enemies of the declaration that all men are created equal had to turn tail and run.  Gentlemen, this is a glorious theme and a glorious occasion for a speech, but I am not prepared to make one worthy of the theme and worthy of the occasion.

I would like to speak in all praise that is due to the many brave officers and soldiers who have fought in the cause of the Union and liberties of this country from the beginning of this war, not on occasions of success, but upon the more trying occasions of the want of success. I say I would like to speak in praise of these men, particularizing their deeds, but I am unprepared. I should dislike to mention the name of a single officer, lest in doing so I wrong some other one whose name may not occur to me.

Recent events bring up certain names, gallantly prominent, but I do not want to particularly name them at the expense of others, who are as justly entitled to our gratitude as they. I therefore do not upon this occasion name a single man. And now I have said about as much as I ought to say in this impromptu manner, and if you please, I’ll take the music.