CHAPTER 6. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—THE HOPI 97
- I know that wars and famines can come and go
- And I shall not be moved.
- I have seen and felt and been a part of this Holy Fire.
- For as I knelt it seemed to envelop me
- Without burning my flesh
- (Or was I in the flesh or in the spirit?)
- Henceforth my faith in the good, the beautiful, the true
- Is strengthened.
- For I have caught some of that Holy Fire.
- That Inner Light has been rekindled.
- For I have seen God.
Radical Philosophy
"Is that all your education amounts to?"
"Better lay up some money; who will take care of you in your old age?"
"You with your crazy ideas; how many followers have you got?"
"You write books that no one will print; and articles that no one reads except fools like yourself; you all spend time converting each other."
"Don't be more Catholic than the Church."
Such are the barbs that come from relatives and friends. To have to argue with Christians that God would take care of those who seek first the Kingdom; to have to try to prove to a priest that Jesus really meant the Sermon on the Mount; to have to tell so-called metaphysical leaders that their Mammon worship was not important and that "all things work together for good to those that love God"—all this might seem superfluous but it is part of being fools for Christ's sake; part of trusting in God rather than in the social security and old age pension of a war-making state; it is part of that "Life at Hard Labor."
Recently I had letters from two anarchists-one a young man who had been a 4F in World War II (a 4F is one excused from military duty because of ill health or deformity.) He now had intellectually made the jump from this position to that of anarchism. The other is an old man much past the four-score-and-ten, who had given up any hope of educating any portion of the masses against the coming war. Both suggested emigrating to some tropical country away from the materialistic world, where a few of us who knew better could cooperate and survive. These two comrades lacked that which I had lacked before finding the spirit of Christ in solitary. Truth is eternal and as Tolstoy says, no sincere effort made in the behalf of Truth is ever lost.
Wells and Toynbee may write of the significance of history; Churchill may boast of his part in contaminating it; and Hutchins may o.k. the bomb with his right hand (whether he approved of the use of the bomb he stayed there while it was being worked out) and issue the Great Books with his left hand—but all this cannot hide the fact that there once lived a man who faced this issue; who
