The Holy Grail of physics is the Grand Unification Theory. So far, a balanced equation has escaped physics. But I believe it will eventually be found if we ever understand what “Life” is, what it is that animates at birth and departs with death. The Holy Grail of world peace requires a balanced equation as well. And through the amendment as a starting place I believe it can be found.

    One of the missing components of the equation has always been the exclusion of women in the process of seeking solutions. You don't discount an entire one-half of the human race and hope for a solution.

    Another missing piece of the equation has been the failure of humanity to give children the proper priority. These two things alone have been more than enough to doom the world to a history of conflict and continuing warfare.

    I used to be very religious. As such, I prayed long and often. But I never got an audible reply in response to my much praying. I always wished God would answer audibly, that I could be certain of a yes or no to my requests. I would pray for wisdom and guidance and ... nothing. I've wished for a messenger angel to tell me: “Hey, Sam, God just got your latest request and here's what you're supposed to do.” Nope. Never happened.

    Why couldn't I have a burning bush or Damascus experience? Why didn't God speak to me as He did my namesake, the last Judge of the Old Testament? Was God mad at me? Surely I gave Him reason enough many times. It wasn't until I wrote the HEY, GOD! book that things began to come together for me. I really poured out my doubts and reservations of those things I used to believe in that book. It was not only an intellectual exercise, finally discriminating between what I knew as opposed to what I believed, it was a catharsis of religiosity, a cleansing of much hypocrisy and religious prejudice in my own life that I confronted honestly in the book.

    So I began to consider this lack of communication between God and myself. Was I praying or talking to myself? And if praying, why no answers? Gradually I began to consider the other guy who writes this stuff that goes under the name of Heath. I've always known it wasn't me; it was that stranger with whom I, at times, only have a reserved and polite acquaintance.

    As I lay in my bed at night, I would pray. Nothing. But a new thought began to form. Was God replying or was I carrying on a conversation with myself, talking with myself? Now I talk to myself frequently. I long ago realized that if I wanted an intelligent conversation, I would have to talk to myself. But I have never heard voices. I may be nuts but I'm professionally qualified to know what that means and I'm not quite ready to be committed. Not yet. Sure 'nuff workin' on it though.

    Well, I asked myself, suppose those conversations required God's input? I often come back to myself while talking with God with questions and answers of which I may not, in fact, be the author; a considered possibility. And if I'm not the author of such ideas, questions and answers, Who?

    I have never understood the compulsion to undertake the amendment. The idea presented itself and while at first rejecting it, the more I considered it, the more pragmatically and logically it became the only way to begin the process toward world peace. Certainly I could look at my background and experience working with children and understand trying to do something for them. I've spent my life working with and for children. But a U.S. Constitutional Amendment, and one that would cause America to begin the revolution leading the world to peace?

    The more I examined the profound implications and complexities of the amendment, legally and sociologically, the more convinced I was of the very genius and originality of it, a genius I couldn't claim for myself leading to something no nation in the history of the world had ever done through the foundational charter of its government.

    The genius of the amendment, in large part, lay in the fact that it does, indeed, transcend all national characteristics and boundaries, it addresses an issue on which all people of the world agree. For the first time in history it makes America, the world, face itself with the question of whether or not we do cherish children as the hope of the future of the world, of an advancing civilization.

    Another part of the genius of the amendment is the fact that there was a love and caring in this of which I could never dream of being capable. At the very least it had to be the work of that other guy if not of God. But I'm not about to say God made me do it, that the idea is His. When people ask me what I know about God, I tell them honestly: Nothing! But ask me if I believe in God, emphatically YES! Ask me what I believe about God and the time would fail in my reply. That was a part of my own conversion away from religiosity and the tyranny of religion, learning to separate what I know from what I believe.

    But who is that other guy, for example, that in spite of the many betrayals of my love, in spite of having my heart stomped so many times, keeps trying to stick up for women? Who is that guy who keeps a romantic mindset, who is sensitive and caring, who seems to love children when I want to tell the world to go to hell and leave me alone while I go fishing? He seems to be there in my conversations with God. He seems to be there when I'm ready to throw in the towel and tell the world to go to hell and leave me alone.

    This other guy doesn't seem to know when he's licked. And he refuses to become bitter, hard, cynical, callous and unbelieving. Who is this guy who seems to take over just after I've been pouring out, quite angrily and loudly at times, my complaints against and to God and others?

    Well, whoever he is, he is relentless. I can't seem to escape him. And I've certainly tried to. I've described him, at times, as the best part of the man, the child within who has the wisdom and innocence of childhood that the man lost along the way.

    But there's a kind of maturity, at times, that this child seems to possess, a maturity I don't have that enables him to examine and reflect on things I would never be able to think of. It's as though he can delight in the seemingly erratic flight of a butterfly yet find a logical pattern in it. But such things have no practical value to me.

    I ask myself at times whether I'm responsible for protecting this child and, if so, how? But wouldn't I far rather be rid of him? It would, again at times, sure make my life a lot simpler and easier. For example, I know when I'm beat, when to give up. He doesn't.

    He delights in the great musicals of the theater, the great works of poets and philosophers who encourage things like love, romance and chivalry. He delights in the compatibility of differences between men and women, in the peculiar differences between mother and father in their relationship between each other as husband and wife and their different relationship to him as mom and dad, of the differences between his boy companions and girl companions.

    There is fascination, mystery and charm, even adventure in those inexplicably strange and marvelous creatures called girls that are so very, very different to him as a boy. There is a totally non-understandable, mysterious yet exciting promise about them of something future. But what is that thing? It intrigues the child-boy. Part of the indefinable mystery of it all is the lack of the boy's ability to think of much in the way of future beyond tomorrow. This is a time when the two weeks before Christmas seems an eternity.

    He may even try to impress these marvelous creatures when he is in kindergarten. But he could never explain why he felt he wanted to. He wouldn't even talk about it and would be terribly embarrassed if someone should accuse him of doing so. Part of his embarrassment would be the inability to articulate a reason. If he doesn't understand it himself, how can he possibly explain it to others?

    But another part of his embarrassment remains a mystery into adulthood. A large part of this lack of understanding will carry into adulthood, an adulthood plagued with thousands of books written by other adults who don't understand either. I think I was looking for the other half of myself. I was, as she, incomplete without the other. Of course, how could any child understand or articulate such a thing?

    I frequently refer to the great works of literature and stage and often read such books and watch the movie productions over and over. I read, among others, Thoreau's "Walden" and Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mocking Bird" at least twice a year.

    Then there is William Inge's "Splendor in the Grass." I very much appreciate Natalie Wood's artistic genius in playing the role of Deanie, a tormented young woman, with such extraordinary sensitivity. I will always believe Natalie knew personally the tragedy that Deanie suffered.

    But it is the ending of the story that always affects me as deeply as she and Bud (Warren Beatty in his introductory role) ask the question of each other: “Are you happy?” Each replies that they don't think about that much anymore. And they don't need to speak of the heartbreakingly grievous pain of such thoughts; it needs no words spoken. It is understood.

    As a society, we are not happy people. In fact, I don't meet many people who have ever known real happiness, at least not in the sense of Inge's story. I write of this at some length in my Birds book. The loss of the best of innocence in childhood that would lead to real love and romance for the adult in a society carries a heavy price. Most people now are best described in the words of Bud: “I guess you just have to take whatever comes along.”

    But both Deanie and Bud realize they lost something precious, something priceless, and will never be happy again because they once knew happiness and it would never be there for them again. They have the standard of real happiness against which all the experiences of the rest of their lives cannot escape comparison and be found wanting. They will spend the rest of their lives loving others without that kind of happiness again. Ever.

    The Splendor in the grass will never fade. It is a haunting thing once you have known it and lost it. This is the tragedy of betrayed love and innocence. As Deanie leaves after seeing Bud for the last time, the lines of Wordsworth's poem, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” come to her mind:

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now forever taken from my sight,

    Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;

    I leave the Ode at this place because of the way Inge used it and because it best makes the point here without going on to grim reality or vain attempts to justify such monumental loss of profoundly innocent love and happiness by supposed lessons learned. Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Or, Better never to have known love than to have loved and lost?

    Inge leaves the question unanswered. Indeed, he had no answer. He magnificently poses the question but knows better than to attempt the answer.

    Of course, can you miss something you never had, something you have never experienced? You can if someone else tells you they have had such a thing, such an experience. You can recognize the hollowness of your own heart in response and never have found love and romance in your own life.

    But if you knew the pain of the betrayal and consequent lost love and innocence Inge presents beforehand, who in their right mind would opt for such a thing? Yet it requires such experience to warn others, to be a poet, to be able to separate the diabolical from the divine for the sake of others. The genius of such a system is the survivor alone knows whether it was truly worth the pain in order to save and keep the innocent from such pain in their own lives.

    There is a desperate need for civilized manners in our society, for protocols and proprieties to be observed. There is a need for chivalry and the encouragement of protecting the weaker, of ridding society of bullies and predators of children. There is a desperate need of encouraging the ideals of childhood and adolescence.

    The betrayal of the ideals of youth and innocence is not the price of reality and should never be misconstrued as such. When I write and speak of the absolute necessity of guaranteeing children a lawfully protected safe and innocent childhood, too many react as though reality carries just such a price. Such people may well have never experienced real love and romance, may never have experienced the splendor in the grass Inge so movingly presents. Such people cannot know the price paid for real love and romance, the price our children pay for such a chance being ripped away from them.

    I have learned many things from the betrayal of my love and trust, the betrayal of my innocence. But they are lessons I would far rather not have learned. Life may well be too often a bittersweet waltz. But it needn't, shouldn't be. Children, young people, know this. As adults, with vaunted mature thinking, planning and, yes, plotting, abetted by never knowing the best of the ideals and innocence of childhood in too many cases, we have become a callous and hardened society that acts like it hates children.

    If such a society thinks itself adult, sane, then it does indeed take a madman like Boo Radley (To Kill A Mockingbird) to strike the necessary balance and save the children though his actions in doing so be considered unsuitable to the laws of a civilized society. There is a higher law such madmen recognize that must be obeyed or we are lost, the prey of those whose callous bitterness, lust and hatred knows and recognizes no civilized laws of humanity. And, in fact, when such laws, no matter how well intended, deny, even thwart, justice, and only such madmen as Boo can hope to bring society to its sense and understanding of justice.

    The madness of the amendment is of the nature of Boo's madness. It is a call to justice, justice and protection that has been denied children throughout not only our history as a nation, but also the history of the human race. The root of the insanity of our society is the lack of a willingness to risk loving. By cheapening love through perversion of every description, whether pornography, abortion as a means of contraception, the entertainment media, literature that pretends to extol reality at the cost of innocence, we are becoming a hardened and callous, violent people.