There should be a higher law

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

When I go to bed at night, there’s at least one thing that I’m very good at.
The other is being able to empty my mind of the woebegone happenings of the day.
A long time ago I learned how, at shut-eye time, to pack a mental suitcase with any worries, fretting, and negative thoughts I might have and give them up to God for safe-keeping until the next day.
I’m a firm believer that on any given night, we all deserve a restful sleep free of the dark, regurgitated materials that might have crossed our daily path.
I also love to get up really early in the morning, especially during the summer months when, at 5 a.m., I can catch a glimpse of the sunrise not yet written upon by the events of the coming day.
And I can achieve the wake-up call without the mechanical warning system of an alarm clock.
These night and day rituals renew my trump hand on positive thinking, which aside from my appreciation for small wonders, is the currency of my endurance and my existence.
My beef thus lies with the media powers-that-be—who for reasons beyond my comprehension—believe that bad news is the way to jump-start the coming day.
In my view, it’s a sucker punch and something’s gotta change when it comes to the morning news.
I woke up at 5 a.m. yesterday morning pulled to consciousness by the rare use of my alarm clock—set because with Pete being home and putting me in my happy place, I usually sleep in.
The very first words that came out of the national newsman’s voice at the top of the early hour were that “The head of the State Food and Drug Administration in China had been executed.”
Though I am smart enough to know at least some of the harsh realities of the world we live in, visions of a bullet to the head or death by firing squad are not the first conscious thoughts I want planted in my soul at the start of a new day.
What happened to good news first?
If you do an Internet search on this subject, it’s all about the art of sensationalism, what sells, and the public’s thirst for the negative. Sorry, bucko. I’m an optimist.
And while I’ll admit I’ve still a lot to learn in this Earth school and that I may be a small fleck of influence in the argument for the positive, I’m not alone.
The fate of Mr. Zheng Xiaoyu of China, who was convicted in May of taking bribes worth $850,000 to approve the manufacture of an antibiotic blamed for 10 deaths, and other substandard medicines, no doubt is news.
Yet, the poet Pindar wrote, “Unsung, the noblest deed will die.”
Some 14,000 firearms were melted down in Colombia to highlight the danger of illegal arms proliferation, and the molten metal was used to make school chairs and build a monument in memory of victims of violence and kidnapping in Colombia.
That’s hope.
It’s also what my old wicker couch is for on the banks of Frog Creek. It is as Wendell Berry penned, in “The Peace of Wild Things”
"When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakerests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.I come into the peace of wild thingswho do not tax their lives with forethoughtof grief. I come into the presence of still water.And I feel above me the day-blind starswaiting with their light. For a timeI rest in the grace of the world, and am free."