The man who wrote about the [many] roads less traveled was asked dozens of time, "Dr. Peck, why is there evil in the world?" Yet in all his seminars, all his interviews, all his patients, no one ever asked him, "Why is there good in the world?"

When we are challenged to figure out a puzzle we only solve those mind games when we stop and study the configuration of the objects. When I was in my pre-teens my blind grandfather could untie knots better than I could - and he couldn't even SEE the tangled shoe strings! What deep dark secret did he have stashed away in his mind that enabled him to untie the knot in his grandson's shoe laces?

In our 58 years of marriage, my wife and I have been in several different churches (really, congregations) and we have never found a perfect church. We're not the only ones though because recently we received an e-mail from someone who had been "bothered" and he wrote, "In the past 30 years I have seen so much here...decisions made that I don't like...". Before I even had a chance to think about writing this person a response my wife said, "I'm going to write Charlie..." (We don't have any "Charlies" in our church so don't try to figure out who it is.) What my wife wrote him was nothing more than he should have figured out himself - if he had just looked at the problem instead of trying to think where he could go after he "left our congregation".

International Business Machines (IBM) does not have a monopoly on the word THINK, even though they made the word famous years ago with those word reminders you would see on desks all over the country. Before we change jobs we need to check out that place we think has "greener grass". Is it closer or farther than where we work now? Is it a new or older company? What kind of people work there? Do people seem happy who work there? Four questions have been noted and money or hours have not been considered. One time I asked a new personnel director what she thought of her new job; she said, "Bill, all jobs are really the same - you just trade problems." And she was the HR person! Admittedly it may be hard to accurately find out if most people are happy at their jobs, but it is not rocket science to read the odometer to check mileage, or in a few visits to the place it shouldn't be too difficult to get an idea of employee attitudes. THINK - it's a good start before you change.

Life is full of contrasts. Differences prevail rather than diminish. Could it be good is in the world to alleviate the bad? Poets have a field day with different climates or personalities--why can't we learn from them if there were no other pedagogue around. Rather it is obvious people do what they want to do. Axioms abound, one in particular has taught Psychology 101 with the words: "If you always do what you've always done, you will always get what you've always got." Simple. Discontent? Try something different - THINK. Perhaps we are the good that some evil people need. Perhaps we are the bad, in someone's eyes, that cause their problems. Perhaps the contrasts (in people, in patterns) produce the total picture. Could it be that it is our grandma who is saying, "Everybody is out of step but my Billy"? Hummmm. Perhaps we are where we are by God's design or providence, by fate, by chance or maybe because we were trained to be there or maybe it was just plain dumb luck. Whatever the reason, don't waste the experience.

In our country or culture we don't believe in a caste system but the truth is we just don't admit to its existence. No one dares to talk this non-existent caste system but too often, for example, when a couple marries, they suddenly discover that God makes people different from others. Often, principles of physics enters and we learn "opposites attract" and couples flail about in life, mystified at such findings. Sometimes we actually realize this is a genuine complement of personalities.

Our varying personalities and characteristics create issues when we do not regard our mates. There are social levels that literally govern certain individuals and if a "poorer" caste becomes a mate of a "wealthier" caste, problems often develop. This should not surprise us but still folks who are bred in a different social or financial climate often discover that money does mean more to some than others. My own father-in-law confessed a rather candid remark once when he said, "Marriage is the biggest gamble a man and a woman could ever make." He said that after he had been married nearly sixty years. My barber once told me, "Love is blind; marriage is an eye-opener." Good advice is available even in the barbershop.

Our country doesn't get it because one of the comments recently aired on a C-Span interview was that some great percentage, like 95%, of jobs require education past high school. I'm not exactly sure but I think some miscalculations are at fault. College is simply not for everyone! Oh sure, there are trade schools and employment educational programs but the pressure for "going to college" is one of the faux facts that cause young people to go into more debt than is practical or sensible - and consequently some never pay off those loans or take years to pay off.

Back to my theme, "We just don't get it." YES, we just don't get it: about people's differences, about the invisible caste system in our nation, about opposites attracting, about morning people, about marriage being a daily adjustment of two lives: neither is more important than the other except to those who still think man is superior to the woman -- his head is in the sand!..

Dredging deeper yet into lists of people, a fellow wordwright friend of mine in Huntsville, Alabama, shared some information written by Bill Federer (American Minute for October 5, 2009) about descendants:

"Jonathan Edwards married Sarah Pierrepont, and according to A Study in Education and Heredity by A.E. Winship (1900), their descendants included a U.S. Vice-President, 3 U.S. Senators, 3 governors, 3 mayors, 13 college presidents, 30 judges, 65 professors, 80 public office holders, 100 lawyers and 100 missionaries.

This same study examined a family known as "Jukes." In 1877, while visiting New York's prisons, Richard Dugdale found inmates with 42 different last names all descending from one man, called "Max." Born around 1720 of Dutch stock, Max was a hard drinker, idle, irreverent and uneducated. His descendants included 310 paupers, who, combined spent 2,300 years in poorhouses, 50 women of debauchery, 400 physically wrecked by indulgent living, 7 murderers, 60 thieves, and 130 other convicts. The "Jukes" descendants cost the state more than $1,250,000."

Is it still possible or plausible to say it doesn't matter what we do with our lives or be concerned about our attitudes and personalities affecting the lives of others around us? The quality of a country's heritage indeed is based on the quality of those who forged that country's greatness. This should concern us as we observe the workings of America. I am grateful for Doris Wilson, my music teacher at North Elementary in Lancaster, Ohio, because she taught us to sing AMERICA (Written by Samuel F. Smith, 1808-1895) Perhaps you recall the teacher who played the piano as you learned to sing this in school:

My country, ' tis of thee,
sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing;
land where my fathers died,
land of the pilgrims' pride,
from every mountainside let freedom ring!

Our fathers' God, to thee,
author of liberty, to thee we sing;
long may our land be bright
with freedom's holy light;
protect us by thy might, great God, our King.

"The course of human history consists of a series of encounters... in which each man or woman or child...is challenged by God to make the free choice between doing God's will and refusing to do it. When Man refuses, he is free to make his refusal and to take the consequences." Arnold Toynbee

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I need to say "THANK YOU" to my friend, James Saddler, of Huntsville, Alabama, for the data in this essay about descendants of two individuals: Johnathan Edwards and a man named "Max". THE WORDWRIGHT