It had started to rain, as I
remember, and we were all trapped inside. I was sitting on my sofa taking a
break from playing with stuffed animals and dress-up, reading my newspaper.
From the side of my eye I saw a little dimpled hand reach out and touch my forehead.
"Why are you frowning Pops? What's wrong?"
I looked up to see her blue eyes
squinting at me with four-year-old concern... And with a flash of wonder
realized that her tiny fingers had touched my frown, and so I immediately gave
her a big smile.
"Oh, it's nothing
darling!" I said. "Pops is just trying to study his newspaper. I'm
trying to learn what it says." And to me, this seemed to console her, as
she gave me a big smile too. She turned and again sat down on the carpet with
her big brother to play Legos... but turned to look at me again, and with
something like an afterthought she said: "You're learning about sad things
Pops?"
But she didn't want an answer for
that. All she wanted was to build a red wall with her Lego set, and hoped that
I would sit with them and help. And as I searched the shoe box for another red
cube to snap together, I felt a rush of fear sweep
through me, a chill to the very bone, and I struggled with everything I had to
hide it. I saw their world unfolding, and mine unraveling, and I thought of the
possibility that no matter how much I tried, I could not stop it. It was too
big. A new world was being created on the ashes of the old, a dismantling of
the country I thought my own.
I saw them in debt, a debt
that could never be paid. I saw that they would never have a moment of complete
solitude, or privacy, or liberty, or ever know truth. I saw that they would be
slaves to a system that would attempt to project itself in their minds as an
original thought, with a scientifically propagandized
methodology long proven to coerce and control.
I saw God displaced by
technology without bounds, science without ethics, and a collective ego without
imagination, or free expression. I saw a system designed to manage their thoughts,
attempting to intimately own their very souls. And I saw, from my own
eyes, bleary with tears held in check, and a lump in my throat from dread, that
I was the only thing standing in the way. Me, Pops.
As I look back over my life, and
what by the grace of God I have created, I find myself responsible for this
world. Just as I have taken responsibility for my own action, so too do I take
responsibility for my inaction. I should have stood up long ago. I should have
studied more, tried harder, and got involved. And from deep inside of my heart,
from a place that holds all of the dusty regrets shelved and tightly sealed, to
keep my sanity, I can only say, I'm so very sorry. I'm so sorry my little ones.
And I know that most likely by the time you realize this world for what it is,
I'll be long gone.
I hope you live in a world of
enlightenment, illuminated by truth, and your hearts are full of love and joy.
If you have found this around you, I could rest easy in eternity, because I
know by my study that the liberty that creates this is not free, and that
someone bled to give it to you. So know this, I love you more than anything in
this world, and I'll kept trying until my dying day, just as I know you will
for your own grand kids, by the grace of God.
Pops
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