Wanting To Be Born

This blank page does not ask me to fill its emptiness. It can contribute little to art or literature except with its utilitarian purpose, and that, only if given "life" by a human hand. But the potential to place the symbols of one's thoughts with ink upon this medium and with a modicum of reasoned intelligence to send a message, is still a gift that I may in turn give fancifully, to this lonely and obedient white "sheet" and cyberspace cousin to the wood pulp bi-product of yesteryear.  The unborn child contrastingly, is instinctively cooperating with the natural changes that bring it closer and closer to its destiny or its normal potentiality: birth. Everything we do volitionally or otherwise is made possible by a series of very complex events, all of them descended from the miracle of conception, the irresistible forces of the universe and the willing nurturing of mature humans and/or prospective parents.

There is the "smart" remark that many an adolescent suffering the angst and/or revolutionary fervor of his age group proclaims: "I never asked to be born!"  The one dimensional truthfulness of this statement impresses, but only within the confines of the resentment of an immature world view that snickers at a Supreme Intelligence.  Of course, there are millions of things that are beyond our control, chief among them: our births and our deaths. No doubt, abortion and suicide may seem to give the lie to such an assertion. But who deems control a virtue (and why?) regarding these profoundly important subjects? And how does the destruction of human life (or certainly, in the case of abortion, at the very least: its annihilation of obvious, flowering potentiality) bring forth blessings or promote the affirmation of life and lessen human suffering? The usual assertions about the need for population control and the fight against indigence, always struck me as coldly clinical and disturbingly dismissive of the power of human love.  When friends would unexpectedly visit our house when I was a child, I remember my mother's natural temperament of anxiety and doubt: "Is there enough food, do we have enough chairs, what shall we do?" My Dad, contrastingly, though no more or less decent a person than his wife, always extended a greeting for the visitors that was unmistakably inviting to the degree that any diffidence or tentative shyness on their part evaporated like a raindrop on an August afternoon. "We are very happy to see you and glad that you are here!" was what he expressed unfailingly in his manner and in his body language. Mom forgot her worries too and the spirit of joy and a salute to L'chaim was what characterized each and every one of these gatherings.

So too, with the approach of a new member to the Family of Man, there seems no good reason for such similar welcoming ways not to be embraced as the only acceptable manner in which to relate to a "blessed event." There is room for one more always... room for one to be loved and in turn, to learn of and to practice its majesty and to repeat the wonder again and again and yet again. Love is not constricted by occupancy laws or tote sheets. But we know that the miracle of life is far from an inevitable reality. Since 1973, 54.6 million lives have been aborted. That's more than nine times the number of persons slaughtered in the Holocaust of 1942-45.  The banality of the reactions to these facts and the enervation of feelings for or against these staggering statistics are infinitely more horrific than the rantings and spasmodic, homicidal acts of the showy mass murderers of recent decades and tabloid tales of infamy. Like zombies, few ponder the consequences of this Culture of Death or seem capable of doing so.  Our current political climate apparently mirrors this sleepwalking, as the charlatan in The White House seems to defy gravity with his ponderous chains of failure and incompetence unable to significantly weigh down his popularity with, yes, 47% of the electorate and fearfully, perhaps more. But not to digress: the "vote" for Life is cast less and less as the century advances and the soul sickness of these abominations, these pro-"choice" posturings that enshroud hatred and possessiveness in an emperor's clothes of imagined dignity and "reproductive rights" continue their retreat from The Light and toward the vileness of demonic realms. As long as one terms something a right, its legitimacy is somehow deemed guaranteed by these losers.

Roe v. Wade may not be overturned anytime soon.  More lives will be snuffed out.  But evil will be rebuked and more.  Obama may return to sully the Oval Office further (to the delight of bribe takers everywhere), Iran may get the Bomb, Israel may finally be "solved" to the delight of Schicklgruber's shade and Islamo-fascism may flourish again. Still, the "lightning of His terrible swift sword" is coming and all the cynicism and derisive cackling will not stop it and then the fear and loathing of babies being allowed into the world will be mightily dwarfed by the blinding "birth"of a religious reawakening and immeasurably more so by The Second Coming.  He will not be mocked.