Embarrassing as it is to admit, my first attempt at flying a gas model airplane ended in a total disaster. Fortunately it was only a silhouette model and I didn’t have that much time invested in building it. But I learned from that early attempt and went on to success, though the scale models which required a great deal of time and effort in building were not the best performers. But those scales were beautiful. As with so many of the issues of life perseverance was the key to success, and that first disastrous attempt could have been the end of my experience with gas powered model airplanes.

What is it that causes some to persevere and others to give up? What a person believes has much to do with this distinction. It was my good fortune to be born into a generation and among good people who encouraged children in doing things like building model airplanes rather than joining gangs dedicated to crime. Mine was the generation raised to slogans like “Crime does not pay” and “Honesty is the best policy,” a generation with justifiable pride in America. In short, mine was a generation that believed in America.

It all comes down to what people believe. If you believe others are inferior because of race you act accordingly. If you believe taking a gun and robbing and killing others is acceptable you act accordingly. If you believe no one has a right to have nice things and you deface property with graffiti or other acts of vandalism, and so on. It is all a matter of belief.

Parents, churches, and schools used to teach moral values and children were raised with beliefs in such things. This is no longer the case. In every instance where such instruction is attempted here come the ACLU and its accomplices to destroy all attempts to maintain standards of moral and civilized behavior. That America has fallen prey to a Federal Triune Dictatorship dedicated to corruption robs children of any chance of believing in America and encourages the growing barbarism throughout our nation. What are the beliefs of our leaders? In the words of Jesus, “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” I don’t wonder Kissinger says there is no chance for success in Iraq. What chance does America itself have without a national heritage, culture, language and identity, when our leaders won’t even secure our own borders because of their unholy lust for slave labor?

A friend has just come by to visit. As we often do, we got into a philosophical discussion about religion and I was attempting to explain my dissatisfaction with preachers in general. During our conversation he provided me with an excellent example of my statement that preachers, much like university professors, major in abstractions, not things that are of any real value to our lives in this down and dirty real world.

Well, I had used the word absolute and he seized on that saying God was the universal absolute. Now I know, good hearted as he is, he thought he had defended the honor of God and said something of real value that made perfect sense. But what that something was, there are no words in our vocabulary to explain.

Emerson pointed out the poet as the namer and maker gives expression to the thoughts common to most, thoughts that while common enough many people are incapable of verbalizing themselves. But poetry as such is not expression given the imprimatur of the universities that have bastardized the very meaning of the once venerated office of the poet, of those who made events, nature, and people memorable by “theater.”

In science, the concept of workability is the hallmark. That and replication are the essence of all science. If it works and can be repeated, explained, it’s good science. Preachers are poor scientists of their trade. Once you remove all the emotional attachment and prejudice of the average preacher’s verbiage, you have little left that has any practical benefit in the workaday world with which most of us have to contend. Just take away his pet phrases and buzzwords and few are left with anything to say. Small wonder Sam Clemens said: “He was as happy as if church had just let out!”

While living here on the mining claim I learned pinecones burn hot and fast but they have no lasting value, unlike a good honest piece of oak. Now the pinecones are great for starting the fire, but you need the oak for the long haul. How’s that for good old boy homiletics?

Jesus said he that overcomes, perseveres, will inherit the kingdom. The faint-hearted need not apply. He also said that we would be given the power to do so if we mean business. But there are many pretenders to the faith, without any real repentance from dead works, who, when the going gets rough or the Devil seems to offer a better deal or whose egos get in the way, fall away. By their fruits we know them.

What reality of God answers to our grief, when we desperately need answers? I believe there is a very human aspect to God, which stands to reason. If He had wanted robots He would have created them. Instead, He made people, in His image, creatures that could love and hate, work and fail, create and appreciate beauty, imagine and dream.

The humanity of the prophets and disciples is evident throughout the entire Bible. In Galatians 5:12 Paul wishes the Judaizers would emasculate themselves. In 4:9 Paul is indecisive about whether we know God or He us. In Ephesians 4:18 we are told that ignorance of divine things is due to hardening of our hearts; in 6:12 there are forces of evil in the heavenly realm. Colossians 1:19 there is a reconciliation of things in heaven to be accomplished. Indecision and human weakness are all there; no plaster saints.

Conviction of wrongdoing brings surrender and repentance, which brings obedience. That is the way of The Gospel. The conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount ends with the warning to count the cost and build accordingly. No one can do this without cold, hard facts in hand. If we are left guessing, God has played a cruel joke on us. However, if we are able to “know” it is worth everything to find out and pursue the very best that God has for us. And it should be exciting work, not guesswork.

It is one of my most infuriating traits (to my detractors in religion and education) that I insist that God is both reasonable and practical. I even believe He expects us to be these things as well. I believe in teaching young people the value of learning, of setting goals and persisting in accomplishing them, of persevering in tasks undertaken.

If Heaven is anything less than having joy in jobs that are worthwhile, of learning things of value, of being able to build, create, fellowship with those like-minded, of having fun, then it would be a cheat. But if it is all these things and more, religious leaders are having no success in showing it.

Heaven must offer both peace and excitement; it must be a place with a trout stream, mountains, and an abundance of wild life and unlimited opportunity to grow in mind and spirit. So I believe Heaven to be, particularly in the wilderness, in the stars at night and in the hopes, dreams and aspirations of young people who haven’t learned what is impossible.

I long for “Sons of Liberty” where others and I fired with that same revolutionary spirit against evil could resort, without distinction between plebeian and patrician, and encourage one another. While it is certainly a commonplace befitting our human condition to, lacking position in the higher classes, make a virtue of the lower, but this has somewhat to do with my own, professedly tongue-in-cheek, appellation of an Okie Intellectual. But it serves me well in getting the goats, if not the attention otherwise, of my self-assumed betters.

Reminds me of my own kin. My brother didn’t write much because he was proud but couldn’t spell his way through a book of cigarette papers. His failure to write is a great loss because he could have helped so much in putting some things of interest to his own children in print and helping me in much of my own writing. It is sad to me that our great-grandmother, grandparents and mom didn’t write down many of the stories they shared with us as children. Sadly, there are some things, like what really counts in life, that are only appreciated with age and wisdom.

The seeming disparity between an Andrew Johnson and Abraham Lincoln is easily resolved in the reading of histories. It is for that reason I encourage you to read Bowers’ account, The Tragic Era. It takes the historian of the soul and appreciation of the poet to do justice to history. For this reason, our most ancient historians were, literally, poets. The mythic of some of the histories had more to them than a simple embellishment of facts. The exaggeration of truth is not always with the intent of passing a lie. It is not always for the purpose of making the teller more important than he really is. The Indian acting out the hunt serves to provide not just the bald facts, but also a story that will be remembered.

Sadly, many truths become legend and are distorted to the point of prejudice; and those that are ignorant of the facts, whether willingly so or not, begin to build their own “facts” on such distortions. Convinced in their own minds of a truth which has no basis in anything but presumption (like the theory of Darwinism and the wars of Caesar Bush), the followers of noble lies and fairy tales designed to promote their own peculiar prejudices often carry them to the extreme of persecuting those that refuse to believe a lie. God’s “strong delusion that they will believe a lie... because the love of the truth is not in them” will be of such a character; the ministers of this grand lie will, as usual, come as angels of light.

I have come to know many wealthy and powerful people. The majority of these, while agreeing with much that I write about, would never be able to put their own thoughts into print as I do. For that reason, these men and women, many good people, would never put in writing what they share with me in confidence verbally. I understand this and have never betrayed their confidences. But there was a time not long ago when honorable men were able to freely express their minds; when political candidates were not one dimensional players in a schlock drama in spite of, at times, making speeches to the sound of cocking pistols in their audiences.

The poets of America have all but disappeared. And America is all the more impoverished, even placed in increasing danger because of this loss. But poets are the true believers, and little of the America my generation knew remains to sustain the belief in America of poets.