El Salvador: Life Goes By So Fast and the Conclusion Is Determined By Us

It’s hard to believe that already more than half the year has gone by and that very soon we’ll all be ripping off the pages of still another calendar. It’s frightening somehow to think that life goes by so fast and the course which it flows to its hasty conclusion is determined by us. No one else — not God, not the stars, not history just us. We etch out that course with our little pickaxes, if we’re complacent; but with a bulldozer if we want to go beyond. It’s interesting; history is created by men but history also dominates men and standing now at the apex of history we can decide and must decide whether we will be creators of a new future or whether we will merely accept and amble our way to whatever destiny determines. We can run or we can — as we always have — walk. We can use a shovel or a pickaxe or we can use a steam shovel and a bulldozer. We can choose and be valiant in doing so or we can, like so many, sit and wait: stand aside and let the choice go by forever. We can be noble or insignificant but the question still begs: Who is on the Lord’s side?

I was just thinking that none of us joined this movement for glory or fame and I think few of us, if any, saw riches and fortune at the end of the rainbow; many of us doubted the rainbow actually had an end. But we’ve been promised all this and more, much more and that makes the taste of success all the more palpable. It’s so interesting; we’ve been giving and giving and we’ve been exhorted to give still more that it has become a way of life for us. Sometimes we almost see it as a game: who can give most.

Somehow in all this giving we forget who we were before and we forget what it is to be selfish and one day we look back and say: “Gee, you’ve come a long way, baby!” And it’s true. We don’t even recognize ourselves anymore. We’ve come out of ourselves and we’ve become someone new — better, fuller, deeper, altruistic. We’ve finally come to realize in our life, our own very lives, what the idea of Give and Take is

all about. Wham-O, we got it! How to be generators of energy and force and life. We’ve tapped it — that ultimate source. We had an experience which connects us to the ultimate source. And it’s indelible; nothing can erase it. This experience gives us the security for a new adventure and we go on — one experience on top of another and each one has to be better and “Away we Go!”

But what I started to say at the beginning is just this: that etching out a course in history is our business and that’s what we all got together for. But not just any course. No! We want the straightest, fastest and closest road. Somewhere we got a taste for it and nothing lets us forget that taste even if we leave it for a bit. We got this urge, this itch under our skin, this vision that it’s right around the corner. And asleep or awake we can’t forget it. We didn’t think about being heroes or famous when we started but somebody had to do something, it was clear. Whether they call us heroes or fools we had to do it — take the ax handle and give it a whirl or a swing. We couldn’t just sit and wait. We had to earn it by our blood, sweat and tears if necessary. We didn’t want to be given anything. And so here we are counting off the days and having a race with time. Why? Who cares whether we run or walk? What’s all the rush about? ‘Cause we got the taste in our mouths and we gotta have it. Isn’t that it?

Come hell or high water nobody nor nothin’s gonna rain on our parade. I think long ago we decided we had enough of the farceness and emptiness of this age and we said something had to be done. Maybe we said it too loud ‘cause somebody heard us and here we are. Working our tails off — so much running sometimes we start to fly. History is changed. History is made every day that we walk, talk, move, think, act. Every time we wake up history is made. So why not something new. Why does it have to keep on being the same old dry lifeless history that it always was? What do we lose if we try to make it better? And if we do nothing to improve it then tomorrow we kick ourselves and say, “I could have!” and we go back and sit in the middle of the muck and the mire and grumble ‘cause it’s the “same old grind.” No! We left all that way behind long, long ago and we gotta finish what we started — what so many people started long, long ago.

This Unification Church that’s so tenacious and so stubborn, it won’t let go and they must all be just a little crazy ‘cause nothing bothers them. If they don’t know for sure what is the truth or the right way at least they are sticking their necks out to try and find out. Not just reciting all those same old slogans and trailing those same old phrases and not even creating new ones. No, what they’re creating is new men and new women who have a new consciousness about everything, especially God and so they got a new picture of this old world and they got a dream and they’re gonna live it or die trying. History is being made and it’s you and me that’s doing it.