We have all witnessed how a newborn foal will stand up and walk, ready for the next day’s gallop.  I have seen how a fourteen-year-old boy, here from El Salvador for three years, speaks basic English with almost no trace of an accent.  These are the workings of different mammal brains, developed over the eons by a munificent Creator.  Who is going to take advantage of such gifts?

Well the horse will, under the tutelage of a human, bring home thousands of dollars from the Kentucky Derby, and the Salvadoran boy will bring home a PhD, with the guidance of a human parent, who knows how to make the most of available opportunities.  If these mentors fail, there’s still the safe life’s work as a saddle horse for hire or an apprenticeship, in the case of the boy, to a good plumber.  If all fails, there’s the pet food container or MS-13 and the inside of a jail.

The not so happy outcomes are the result of failed mentors, people, who I’m happy to tell you, are definitely not in the majority.  I love to see God-fearing people in action, because no matter what they do, it turns out all right.  They can make the biggest mistakes, gaffes, or slip-ups, and the results turn out just fine.  I love that fail-safe context of their lives.

Deep in Manhasset’s valley is the white clapboard Lakeville AME Church (African Methodist Episcopal Zion) which has been there since 1820, a way station during the Civil War for the Underground Railway.  Recently Nassau County celebrated Juneteenth there, but there has been no rioting and vandalism.  They mourned the apparently unintentional death of George Floyd with no cries of revenge.  There was a sucking in of the breath at news of the tragedy.  But the AME church has remained intact.

We cannot expect Christians to get involved other than in peaceful protests, so their impact is not yet felt.  But the day is coming when people will take a more sane view of that monumental tragedy and its egregious aftermath (Seattle, toppling of statues, etc.), and as the AME people will exemplify, peace will return to this plagued and besieged land.

I admire the universe and the world God created,
And I admire the Son He sent.
I  wish I could be as impetuous and impulsive
As the Son was, and express the roots of my being
As he did.
 
But the universe wouldn’t love me for that.
(I know the universe can’t love)
Yet I can feel the sympathy from the Son,
For trying to live within my human limitations,
And not appearing uncontrolled.
 
I have not fully learned to estimate my limits,
And not to try the boundaries of my soul,
But I repose in the garden of my sanity,
Approving of my cautious steps and moves,
To bring life’s turmoil and peace to a satisfying close.
 
 
 

Do not look down on Neanderthal man, or even on the writers of the Bible, intelligent they were; science in the Twenty-first Century, the age of QM (Quantum Mechanics), confesses “that a complete understanding of even the objective, physical world is beyond science’s reach.”  We still pray for a coronavirus vaccine (and it seems a certainty), but those who scoffed at the faith of the three Christian children at Fatima have reached the show-down with reality.

The above quote is from Bob Henderson, a physics Ph.D. who wrote about Angelo Bassi, an experimental physicist at the University of Trieste, in the June 26, 2020 issue of the New York Times Magazine.  Humankind, through men like Galileo, Einstein, and Darwin, has accomplished much.  After all, humans were given by their Creator a brain like none, so far, in the universe.  But that does not mean they can grasp the unattainable.  Reality seems that elusive.

Einstein liked simple formulas; much of the universe follows simple rules.  Those three children at Fatima were doing that.

Asked by a woman where she could get pepper spray to protect herself in an undesirable environment, a police officer said, “Even better is wasp spray.  It shoots up to twenty feet away, temporarily blinds the assailant, and can be bought in any hardware store.”  You don’t have to wait, he observed, until an assailant is close, as with pepper spray, and you can carry the can in your purse.

In addition, it shoots in a stream which you can aim and direct at the face, so he’s immobilized from the start.  It sounds cruel, but in such cases there’s no time for pity.  The officer’s advice was reasonable and easy to follow.  The woman, who lived alone in an apartment, followed it and felt safe.

It is a shame that we live in times like this, but happy are those who find simple solutions.  Nobody likes to be victimized; however, the can is rather big for a purse.