Thursday, April 1, 2010

The Great Truth (A young boy's struggle to find himself)

The Great Truth
(A young boy’s struggle to find himself)

One evening, when during sunset, a mother and her little son walked up a hill—he had met her on her way back from work, talking about being a poet someday, perhaps even a farmer, that he’d take care of her when she got old. He had but to lifted his eyes, and there it was as clear as daybreak to be seen in her eyes, though in years, and miles away; and now with the day being covered over by night, an orange brightening surrounded the last opening of what was left of day.
And what was the Great Truth?
Embraced amongst the neighborhood of houses, there was a large park so spacious that it contained little usage in the back areas. Surrounding this park good people lived in wooden houses—(it was 1955, and the boy was eight-years old), surrounding the houses were nearly every kind of tree Minnesota had to offer: oak, and willow and pine, spruce, and cedar, and so forth, and this steep and difficult hillside the boy and his mother were climbing to get to there house—was very tiring, but the boy often wanted to walk with her side to side, and even emulated her by taking a weed and putting it in his mouth and chewing on it. There were other homes below the hillside and the boy often wondered how comfortable it must be to live below the hill, as if it had richer soil, but it was on a busy street and lots of cars came by and lots of exhaust filled the air, these thoughts were cultivated also—but not at this time, it would be a few years down the road, and when so, the slopes he live on would look better than the level surfaces they lived on.
Other folks, again were congregated into the populous of the city that surrounded them, especially in the lower downtown area, down by the Mississippi River, this is where he went to school, hiked each day, tumbling down the back of the hillside of the park. In short, what he observed was nothing less than the numerous inhabitants of his world, and the modes of life that surrounded him. Why wasn’t he more like them, he asked himself. For all of them, grown folks and children had a kind of knowledge of the world more than he—it was as if they were part of a grand ordinary occurrence, some given gifts of distinguishing, others with perfect minds to calculate.
The Great Truth, then, was a work of the natural world that forgot him, for all around him his neighbors were more perfectly fitted for this grand scheme. Perhaps nature in her off day—had a moody day, a playful day and he was among the mammoth toys she played with, tossed away, and forgot.
When viewed at a proper age, from a longer distance, it would have looked precisely to resemble such features of a boy scorned by his supernatural creator. He even thought if only this Titans, these mammoth giants had sculptured him more like his neighbors’ likeness, mentally, he’d not have any qualms of his debilitation, why did he make him mentally weak and feeble, feeling, more so than they?

He looked up at his mother as they walked up that hill, there was a broad arch to her forehead, she looked a hundred feet in height; the nose, with its little ski-jump bridge; and the slender lips, which, if they could have spoken, would have said, in thunderous words and from one end of the hill to the other, “The Great Truth for you has already been outlined by God, Almighty in you, if only you can learn to discern it, you will have to heap a pile of gigantic rocks pile them high, to see what it is…” And the boy withdrew his eyes from her, with a little more divinity intact, until this all grew larger in the distance, as he grew older in age, at which time the Great Truth appeared optimistically to come alive in him, around him—more so than before—if only attainable.
It was a happy childhood although, and growing up to manhood, he had not forgotten his struggle with the Great Truth, and he tried to live a noble life, for this noble cause, in finding out the great truth which he felt would dawn upon him in due time, for that time would be grand and engaging, seemingly to his mind he’d have to be prepared.
It was an education, and travel and business he sought, always in-between writing his poetry, his feelings, his escape notes, not only to look at but to absorb, live it, even becoming a soldier, going to war, to understand it. He wanted all of it, everything possible, even eating at the mission houses, and sleeping the wet grass drunk as a skunk and living a in poverty—it was all fertility to this young man, all for the preparation of the Great Truth, when it would come. According to the belief of many people, he became very successful in his later adult years, very educated, continually beaming over it, illuminating like the bright sun over the clouds.

As we had began, it was just a mother and her little son, walking up that hillside, as he was gazing up at her face for the Great Truth, and talking about being a poet, a farmer and taking care of her. The Child’s name was Lee.
“Mother,” he said to her, in her old age, “come live with me,” and she smiled at him, he was now fifty-years old, and her smile said “Did you write that book about the prophecy and your vision?” Answered the son, “I will soon,” knowing sometime or another he would write that book, but the mother had eagerly inquired of Lee. “I pray you will do it soon,” she commented.
So his mother told everyone the visions her son had, and his writing of the book he promised her he’d write concerning the prophetic visions, and she told everyone how successful he was, a story of many things. Not things that were of the past, but of what was present, and to come; and they asked “Why him?” The purport was done in poetry, and now he was writing book after, book after book, and he become a noble personage of his day, manhood, he was resembling the man he felt all men should be beyond the given gifts of distinguishing, and those with perfect minds to calculate, beyond the mass of perfectly fitted for this world. A few of the old-fashioned people still cherished his faith and his prophecy, of the coming of the end of days, as foretold in the book of Revelation, which he saw in vision after vision. And then he published this book also “The Last Trumpet,” and his mother cried: “On son, dear son!” and then his mother died.
He could no longer clap his hands above his head, and was discouraged. Generous hopes of this once little boy, now past middle age became depressed, perhaps you may say: it was always in his mind to become all he could become, to take advantage of all opportunities. In this way of thinking, in this manner he did all of that, he grew up with fortitude, a longing, a push and a drive—he was always stacking or piling high those boulders and bricks he knew his mother told him he had to do, to see over on the other side—oh she didn’t say it verbally, but with those eyes on that hillside, yet beyond his mother’s eyes, Lee had had no teacher, save only a few he found by social comparison, he would gaze at those he wished to emulate, and desired, and felt they knew the “Great Truth,” and began to imagine he was them, and he had their features, because he recognized them in him, it was a form of encouragement, veneration, and it formed his personality, his likeness.

Now at sixty-two, he spoke to his following, his readers, his friends the television, on radio, the newspapers and magazines, those who knew him, it was a long path, but speechifying was short, he was for the most part an unpracticed orator, although well educated, and had become, perhaps unknowingly in the beginning, but not at the end, become and was considered a scholar. He never conceived this till now what toil he had undergone to shake his world to fit his mission. He had learned psychology, theology, archeology, anthropology, became in the process a part-time interment Missionary, a preacher, a poet, a novelist, a fighter in the art of karate,” Thank you, sir!” he told the Lord, the very person who walked up another hill with him, when he complained, he had no father to teach him, and the voice said, “I’ll take his place.” The only prerequisite was for him to revere his memory, this memory he now well-regarded.

So there it is, full to the top, so now you know, and forget not, in the back of our minds, we carry as children what we will become as men, perhaps in the process trying to patch up the wounds we get as children. Yes there are trivialities and intrinsic worth we must overcome, sometimes flow with the stream, concede, single out, but in the process we are forming the grand truth, of whom we will become, the blessed fulfillment!

No: 610 (4-1-2010)







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