Wednesday, November 8, 2017

GRACE

                                                          

I have on my dining room wall a painting called “Grace”. It’s a painting of a elderly man with his hands folded, saying a prayer over a small table, with a very simple meal on it. Its origins go back to a photography studio in Northern Minnesota and the year was 1918. Also on the table was a book that many felt represented the Bible. Whether it was a Bible or not, I don’t know, but the implication is there. But it’s the sheer humbleness and simplicity of the scene that took me in when I first saw it. It could have been turkey and all the trimmings, with a bottle of fine wine or cognac but instead it was this simple bowl of soup and a loaf of dry bread. It could have been a man in a three-piece suit with a gold watch fob but in all actuality history tells us, it was a simple peddler chosen for this photo.

Maybe its because I grew up in a house where we had plenty of simple meals that I was touched. I used to see the hurt in mothers eyes, when what she had to dish up, wasn’t much. Maybe it was because my father demanded we pray before we eat, no matter how meager the meal was that this picture hit home for me. I think of people in this world who go to bed hungry all the time and there are nights when I wish it were in my power to whisk my meal off to someone who needs it far more then me.
We are a somewhat benevolent nation with our soup kitchens and food shelves so maybe in a way I’m preaching to the choir. But I look at the rest of the world and it makes me cry sometimes. Why are bombs and rockets raining down on people instead of food? It simply makes no sense. The price of one cruise missile, 1.4 million dollars, could feed the hungry of a small country for quite some time. Who do you think would like you better? People who see you help them feed their starving children or people you shoot missiles at.

Being nice to others used to be second nature. It wasn’t something that needed to be taught. We have a man in the Whitehouse who doesn’t like being nice to others because he feels he will get better results if he threatens and bullies people. That in it self doesn’t bother me so much. The fact that he has followers that seem to endorse this behavior is what bothers the most. There seems to be no limit to what they will put up with from him because party victory cannot be accomplished any other way but through him. It shows us where our country has gone in the last century. It has happened in the past too but in the past it was largely stifled. People said “ouch. I can’t go that far.” The damage that is being done to our democratic system and to our shrinking fan base around the world may take decades to recover from-- if it all.

I had a grandfather who was the most humble honest man I ever knew. In all of the years I knew him, I never knew him to utter a harsh word about others. He led by a quiet example and as a man of the cloth he had a great following. I remember standing by his open casket with my father. My father sobbing and saying “Oh how I wish I could have been the man he was.” I tried to defend my father and told him “you are a good man.” Dad told me grandpa was more then a good man. He was a great man. “There lay’s your mentor my son.”


            

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