Blog 2670 – 02.19.2023
Consider The Source, No Natter What
How often we find ourselves in life playing the devil’s advocate, defending Ego’s interpretation of the facts. Lawyers, politicians, preachers, playwrights, and salesmen are not the only ones who would encourage us to swallow convoluted lies instead of following each lead to the source for verification.
Even supposedly impartial jurors are often swayed by prejudice and prosecutorial misrepresentations in the rush to judgement and thereby convict the innocent and free the guilty.
Yesterday, I watched the classic movie To Kill A Mockingbird again. I have read Harper Lee’s book several times and seen Horton Foote’s screen play of it many times. Gregory Peck’s performance as Alabama lawyer Atticus Finch is one of his best and the entire cast make the story come alive. Long famous actor Robert Duvall plays the reclusive neighbor and hero Arthur “Boo” Radley in his first screen appearance.
When the black preacher in the courtroom balcony stands with all the other black witnesses to this great travesty of a trial and says to Jenny Louise “Scout” Finch, “Stand up, Jenny Louise, your father is passing” I wept. In his closing remarks trying to convince the jury to free the wrongly accused black man Tom Robinson, Atticus pled, “For God’s sake, do your duty.” But the jury of twelve white men fails to weigh the evidence without passion and prejudice choosing rather to believe and to perpetuate the lie instead. Ego wins that one, and truth and justice loses.
In the end of the book and the movie the man who formulated and fomented the lie lays dead in the woods where he had tried to kill Atticus’s children, Jem and Scout who were walking home in the dark through the woods after a fall school pageant, Scout still in her ham costume because she had misplaced her dress and could not find it.
Jem fought hard to keep the assailant off his sister but falls unconscious to the ground with a broken arm. In the nick of time the near neighbor with whom the children are obsessed but have yet to meet intervenes and leaves the liar and would be child murder lying beneath a tree with a kitchen knife under his ribs.
I encourage you if you have never read nor seen To Kill A Mockingbird to do so. Even more I encourage us all to give greater credence to the truth and less to all the misinformation out there.
I have often remarked that I believe the enemy of our souls and the truth is Ego. Many religious people call the enemy Satan which means literally “accuser of the brethren.” Our loving and infinite source, our higher self, on the other hand is ever the advocate and defender of our lives and of the truth. It behooves us to always consider the source, no matter what.
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White
No Matter What
theencouragingword 