A slice between times.    (1999 by Clay Howard)

As we have entered a new century and look back at the most inhumane century of known human history it is worthwhile to back up and consider how we have progressed and regressed as a species.

To demonstrate this paradox, I present my personal family heritage of post-WW2.  You will find it interesting and useful as you look at yourself and the world around you today.   I lived in a world of paradoxes (as most of us have), a world of thought and feelings most unique, where many races and religions coexisted as a family.  Read it slowly, thoughtfully.  It will be worthwhile.

We will begin with an excerpt from my book ‘From the Inside Looking In’.

“This was in a time when we lived in the rural Ozarks (USA). It was an unusual area of rural peace and neighborly harmony and charities.

My parents were of two very different backgrounds.  My father was a Lutheran-Christian (Irish-Welsh) while my mother was an Animist Native American (Creek).  Both held a solid principle of what real Liberties were and the responsibilities it required of the individual.

This, in itself, is, perhaps, the core principle of what all humanity will eventually come to embrace; and with a mature comprehension of what it actually means.  In any case, it was the most significant principle by which I found myself living and thinking.  To this date, it is the most precious gift they mutually could have given me as wonderful parents.

Chapter 2

Diversity

How the web is weaved and to what purposes is a grand mystery; yet, if viewed from an eye beyond the eye, it can be seen as a most coherent and purposeful intention.

My father had a hard but interesting life and was seriously wounded in the invasion of Leyte Island in WW2.  After a day of carrying his arm in a pack,….3 the surgeons reattached it and it took.  He suffered this pain all his life and often wished it had not been a part of him.

He had three brothers.  One served with General Patten in North Africa and Europe and married a woman from French-Moroccan lineage.

‘Jermaine’ was of an unusual background of Islamic and Christian ideology.  She was a gracious, loving, and traumatized woman as she endured the war and transition to America after the end of the war.

Jermaine was a very intelligent woman, educated, gracious in her manner.  We all loved to sit and listen to her reading from books and the delightful accent as she tried to be correct in pronouncing words.  I often thought how beautiful she was.   Her smile was something I have always kept in mind as I have lived my life.

The next brother served in the post-war occupation of Japan and married a Japanese woman…Medora.  It is worthwhile to address this wonderful woman and her virtues and how she affected our family…and me.

Medora was of the Shinto faith.  She was in a labor camp in Japan when the atomic bomb was delivered in Hiroshima…thus, she lost her entire family, all whom she knew.

I know not in what circumstances she came to marry my father’s brother.  In 1951 they came back to America with an infant son; and, with no particular place to go.  My father and mother welcomed them to live with us until they found their place.

Keep in mind, my father had been in the Pacific war fighting the Japanese and lost an arm, been bayoneted, and suffered greatly with the loss of his closest friends.  So, it was not an easy thing to welcome a ‘Jap’ into his home.

Yet, he did.  As a young child, I witnessed the embracement of diversity and acceptance that forgoes all the prejudices and bigotries we are so indoctrinated to think.

Medora was a very gracious woman.  Strong in her soul as she anchored herself and looked into the realities she was confronted with.  We all helped her learn English, did all we could to make her feel and be welcomed.

It did not take long for my father to find, within himself, a good love and concern for this dear woman, as there were no pretenses within her.  I could go so much further with this, like how my father always made sure Medora and her children were fed and okay until her death.  These are the quiet things people do that do not need nor want notoriety.  We just do it because it is the right thing to do.

The youngest brother was in the Korean War and finished his tenure at a military base in the south (USA).  He married a woman who was Creole and embraced Voo-Doo as part of her spiritual life.  To define:  She was of the black-French descent.  Jasman was a beautiful woman with an erect posture and absolutely delightful smile.  To describe her is easy.  She was as black as one could get, hypnotic blue eyes, long black hair.  She was an upbeat pleasure in all gatherings in all manners.  The one thing I can recall are the times the subject of ‘race’ would arise…never in a hateful way…rather, in my father’s and uncles’ delight in hearing Jasmin’s outbursts.  Bluntly, she hated ‘Niggers’ and began to clarify what a real Nigger was, from her point of view.  ‘Niggers’ were of all and any color, those who pursued a life blaming someone else for their plight, those who pursued a way to live off the labor of others, those who lacked the ability to embrace self-sufficient dignity.  I can now understand her words, though, at that time, I was a bit confused with her words.

Make no pre-conclusions…she was loved and respected by all.

As a young child, I simply accepted things as they were.  No questions, no analytics, just a simple wonder at what all were doing and how they enjoyed being together at the moment.

So, as I look back, what a wonderful web was weaved!  It was not just for me.  Rather for each person for whatever purpose it served for them.

What was the consequence of this time and circumstance?  Of course, it required time and a journey on my part to comprehend what it all meant and how it mortared the seams of my own view of existence and its purposes.

In summary, for you (the reader), we have four white, religiously delinquent, Lutheran background men who came to marry an Animist Native American, a French-Moroccan Catholic-Islam, a Shinto Japanese, a Voo-doo Creole.

Sort this out as you may.  But, I can most sincerely say these were the most worthy times of my little life.  I did not know what ‘prejudice’ was.  Nor did they.  Never heard the word.  I can say, most sincerely, this was the intended beginning of my life’s endeavor to pursue the knowledge and origins of the diversity of human life.  And, totally open to whatever realities this endeavor revealed.

A Conclusion

Racisms and prejudices have always existed, everywhere on this planet, in every culture and nation.  It still exists and probably always will, to some measure.  Every race and civilization has had its form of indentured servitudes and slavery; and, it exists today in every part of the planet.  Every culture has had, and continues, its religious bigotries and sense of an exclusive ‘favoritism’ of their ‘god’.  And, from these combined factors of the human attitude have come the greatest inhumanities.  Accept this, about us, or deny it.

Those who have come to think of themselves as a soul who ‘knows it all’, vain and concrete in their illusions of intelligence and those in the powers of contradictions of liberal bigotries, those in the positions of ‘authority’ without the power of wisdom and empathy, all have their place in the gutter of humanity.  And, this applies to every race, every religion, every politic.  There are no exceptions.  The old wisdom applies…point a finger at someone else and you have four fingers pointing back at you.

As the ancient ones defined, and is just as obvious today, there are seven primary races, seven primary spirit types, and seven mental cultures on this planet.  Each has its unique design and purpose. Each has its strengths and weaknesses.  Call it a part of their DNA or whatever combination of factors you wish, but it is still there; and, corresponds to the seven primary vortexes in the human bio-structure. (You can have these defined in any esoteric or metaphysical library.)  This knowledge is as old as time.

All seven primary races possess all seven primary qualities, capacities, and vortex-activity;  yet, with a dominant one that overrides the activity of the others. The designed purpose of our species is to consciously balance, put in cooperative harmony, all seven vortexes and the essential qualities of consciousness each possesses.

The only realistic opportunity we have in this unique moment in time is our global ability to communicate.  It has not happened before.  As unique as that opportunity is, it lends itself to the best and least of the human qualities.  For those who are principled upon the positive evolution of our ‘spiritual natures’ and the mutual natures of all humanity, we must follow the fundamental guidelines of constructive communications.

1. Take time to put one’s self in the shoes of another.
2. Take time to look into the path each has taken that brings them to the ‘mindset’ and life they live.
3. Take time to measure at least twice before cutting once with your response.
4. Take time to look into yourself and see how many fingers are pointed back at yourself as you point one at another person.
5. Take time to look into your own, most personal and intimate past and how it has led you to the conclusions, perspectives, ideologies, conduct that you are today.
6. Take time to look into how this armor of ‘pride’ is also the barrier to your own humility and honesty with yourself. It is the subtle demise of all that is most fulfilling to you and others without this effort.
7. Look at life without your eyes. See life as a dimensional state of mind, not as something defined so narrow it alienates yourself from others and the destiny it offers you.
8. Step aside, know what are the good and worthwhile principles of a loving life that will benefit you and all those around you. Forego the dictates and mind-washings that have attempted to make you sheep in life.
9. Take time to know you are, physically, nothing more than dirt. Mother earth has all that you are and will be.  You will return to Her.  In the time you had, will you be a contribution to the better human and world or not?  There is no other question.
10. Whatever the race, culture, religion, or politic….whatever plight in the dynamics of your time…..an honest, peaceful, courageous, all-embracing soul is a hero of living.

Clay