I read this it gave me something to consider and work at. I would love to know what you all think of this. :)
To this day. when I hear the undulating pitch of a siren that approximates the air-raid warning in London, adrenaline floods my body, resurrecting the fear and tension. During one period, the Luftwaffe attacked our city on fifty-one consecutives nights, with the raids lasting as long as eight hours without pause! Fifteen hundred planes came each night, in waves of 250. In those dark days, we could not help believing that everything we cherished- our freedom, our nation, our families, our civilization - would be buried in the wasteland created by those hated bombers.
Only one thing gave us hope; the courage of Royal Air Force pilots who rose in the skies each day to battle the Germans.
I cannot possibly exaggerate the adoration that Londoners gave to those brave RAF pilots. I doubt whether a more adulated group of young men has ever lived. They were the cream of England, the brightest, the healthiest, most confident and dedicated. and often the handsomest men in the entire country. When they walked the streets in therir decorated uniforms, the poplulation treated them as gods.
I came to know some of these young men, though in a far less idyllic circumstance. The Hurricane ( airplane), agile and effective as it was, has one fatal design flaw. The single propeller engine was mounted in front, a scant foot from the cockpit, and fuel lines snaked alongside the cockpit toward the engine. In a direct hit, the cockpit would erupt in an infermo of flames. The pilot could eject , but in the one or two seconds it took him to find the lever, heat would melt off every feature of his face; his nose , his eyelids, his lips, often his cheeks. I met the RAF heroes swathed in bandages as they began the torturous series of surgeries required to refashion their faces.
Throughout the tedious progression of surgeries, morale remained surprisingly high among the pilots. But gradually, as the last few weeks of recuperation drew to a close, a change would set in. We noticed that many of the pilots kept asking for minor alterations. Soon the realization dawned on all of us, including the patients, that they were simply stalling. They could not face the world outside. Despite the miracles wrought by the surgeons, each face had changed irreparably. I especially remember an RAF pilot named Peter Foster, who described to me his mounting anxiety as the release day approached. Your fears and concerns, he said, come to a focus in the mirror. For some months you use the mirror daily , as an objective measuring decive, to scrutinize the progress your surgeons have made.
You try to see yourself as strangers will see you, as loved ones will see you. In the hospital you have been an object of pride, supported by your friends. On the outside you will be a freak. Fear creeps in. Will any girl dare to marry that face, and anyone give it a job?
At that critical moment as each scarred airman contemplated the new image of himself, one factor alone came to matter; the response of family and intimate friends. The surgeons' relative sucess in remaking the face counted for little. The future hinged on the reactions of family members to the news that the surgeons had done all they could and the face before them would never improve. Did the airman sense loving acceptance or recoiling hesitance?
In one group were some whose friends and wives could not accept the new faces.These women, who had idolized their heroic lovers, quietly stole away or filed for dicorve. Airmen who encountered this reaction changed in personality. The became depressed, and reclusive. By contrast, those whose wives and girlfriends stuck by them happily went on to tremendous success- they were after all, the elite of England.
Peter Foster gratefully admitted belonging to that fortunate group. His own girl friend assured him that nothing had changed but a few millimeters' thickness of skin, She loved him, not his facial membrane, she said. They were married soon afterwards.
Naturally , Peter encountered painful reactions from some. Many adults quickly looked away when he approached. Children, cruel in their honesty, made faces.
Peter wanted to cry out, " Inside I am the same person you knew before! Don't you recognize me? " Instead he learned to turn to his wife. " She became my mirror. She gave me a new image of myself," he said with appreciation. " Even now , regardless of how I feel, when I look at her she gives me a warm, loving smile. That smile tells me I am OK. I am doing OK." (wow)
All of us, like Peter Foster's wife are mirrors. Each of us has the potential to help summon up in the people we know and meet the appreciation of the image of God, the spark of Godlikeness in the human spirit. Or instead, we can in our fear and self-absorbtion ignore them, or squelch that image by not being a loving, accepting mirror.
Mother Teresa says that when she looks into the face of a dying beggar in Calcutta. she prays to see the face of Jesus so that she might serve that soul as she would serve Christ himself.
In an often quoted passage C.S. Lewis expressed " It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be stronlgly temted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.
All day long ,we are, in some degree, helping each other to one of these destinations. "
" He who oppresses the poor ( in spirit? - in perhaps at that point,in joy? ) shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God." Proverbs 14:31
" If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything whould appear to us as it is, infinite."
William Blake
To this day. when I hear the undulating pitch of a siren that approximates the air-raid warning in London, adrenaline floods my body, resurrecting the fear and tension. During one period, the Luftwaffe attacked our city on fifty-one consecutives nights, with the raids lasting as long as eight hours without pause! Fifteen hundred planes came each night, in waves of 250. In those dark days, we could not help believing that everything we cherished- our freedom, our nation, our families, our civilization - would be buried in the wasteland created by those hated bombers.
Only one thing gave us hope; the courage of Royal Air Force pilots who rose in the skies each day to battle the Germans.
I cannot possibly exaggerate the adoration that Londoners gave to those brave RAF pilots. I doubt whether a more adulated group of young men has ever lived. They were the cream of England, the brightest, the healthiest, most confident and dedicated. and often the handsomest men in the entire country. When they walked the streets in therir decorated uniforms, the poplulation treated them as gods.
I came to know some of these young men, though in a far less idyllic circumstance. The Hurricane ( airplane), agile and effective as it was, has one fatal design flaw. The single propeller engine was mounted in front, a scant foot from the cockpit, and fuel lines snaked alongside the cockpit toward the engine. In a direct hit, the cockpit would erupt in an infermo of flames. The pilot could eject , but in the one or two seconds it took him to find the lever, heat would melt off every feature of his face; his nose , his eyelids, his lips, often his cheeks. I met the RAF heroes swathed in bandages as they began the torturous series of surgeries required to refashion their faces.
Throughout the tedious progression of surgeries, morale remained surprisingly high among the pilots. But gradually, as the last few weeks of recuperation drew to a close, a change would set in. We noticed that many of the pilots kept asking for minor alterations. Soon the realization dawned on all of us, including the patients, that they were simply stalling. They could not face the world outside. Despite the miracles wrought by the surgeons, each face had changed irreparably. I especially remember an RAF pilot named Peter Foster, who described to me his mounting anxiety as the release day approached. Your fears and concerns, he said, come to a focus in the mirror. For some months you use the mirror daily , as an objective measuring decive, to scrutinize the progress your surgeons have made.
You try to see yourself as strangers will see you, as loved ones will see you. In the hospital you have been an object of pride, supported by your friends. On the outside you will be a freak. Fear creeps in. Will any girl dare to marry that face, and anyone give it a job?
At that critical moment as each scarred airman contemplated the new image of himself, one factor alone came to matter; the response of family and intimate friends. The surgeons' relative sucess in remaking the face counted for little. The future hinged on the reactions of family members to the news that the surgeons had done all they could and the face before them would never improve. Did the airman sense loving acceptance or recoiling hesitance?
In one group were some whose friends and wives could not accept the new faces.These women, who had idolized their heroic lovers, quietly stole away or filed for dicorve. Airmen who encountered this reaction changed in personality. The became depressed, and reclusive. By contrast, those whose wives and girlfriends stuck by them happily went on to tremendous success- they were after all, the elite of England.
Peter Foster gratefully admitted belonging to that fortunate group. His own girl friend assured him that nothing had changed but a few millimeters' thickness of skin, She loved him, not his facial membrane, she said. They were married soon afterwards.
Naturally , Peter encountered painful reactions from some. Many adults quickly looked away when he approached. Children, cruel in their honesty, made faces.
Peter wanted to cry out, " Inside I am the same person you knew before! Don't you recognize me? " Instead he learned to turn to his wife. " She became my mirror. She gave me a new image of myself," he said with appreciation. " Even now , regardless of how I feel, when I look at her she gives me a warm, loving smile. That smile tells me I am OK. I am doing OK." (wow)
All of us, like Peter Foster's wife are mirrors. Each of us has the potential to help summon up in the people we know and meet the appreciation of the image of God, the spark of Godlikeness in the human spirit. Or instead, we can in our fear and self-absorbtion ignore them, or squelch that image by not being a loving, accepting mirror.
Mother Teresa says that when she looks into the face of a dying beggar in Calcutta. she prays to see the face of Jesus so that she might serve that soul as she would serve Christ himself.
In an often quoted passage C.S. Lewis expressed " It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be stronlgly temted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.
All day long ,we are, in some degree, helping each other to one of these destinations. "
" He who oppresses the poor ( in spirit? - in perhaps at that point,in joy? ) shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God." Proverbs 14:31
" If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything whould appear to us as it is, infinite."
William Blake
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