I felt the need to contemporize this one hundred and eleven year old piece and embellish it by including our CREATOR using poetic license. I hope you enjoy it. May you have a blissfull and peaceful Holiday Season. May GOD Bless Us. FWL
Yes Virginia, there is a God. Your little (and big) friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see and even then most will not accept what is obvious. They think that nothing can be which is no comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, are little or used only to the capacity society allows. In this great universe (not just) of ours, man is a mere insect, in her intellect as compared with just the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge through experience. Yes Virginia, there is a GOD. Its essence exists as certainly as the morning bird song, the purple mountains’ majesty, our fruited plain, the shining blue ocean, love, generosity, devotion, those who have give their last full measure, that we shall be free and those who stand in the way of tyranny which allows the kindness which abounds from the hardest of hearts and give to your life its highest beauty and joy in the shortest of an eye blink which will remain seen for generations to come, GOD willing. Alas, how dreary would the world be without the awful grace and forgiveness of Him. It would be as dreary if there were no Virginia (or children to be amazed by). There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry no song, no romance to make tolerable this miserable existence. We would have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight of the material world.
The external light with which childhood fills this world would be extinguished ad infinitem. Not believe in GOD? You might as well not believe in Santa Claus! Why leave any cookies and milk out for the ole geiser and try and stay up near the chimney to sneak a peek? Even if you did not see Santa or God, what would that prove? The gifts (for the privileged) and all the other existential aforementioned would still be. The most real things in our dear little corner of this great Universe are those that neither children nor grown can see. We may not have seen Santa or God, but that’s no proof they aren’t there. We’ve seen their work yet nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are sight unseen and un seeable in our life. You tear apart the baby’s rattle and try to see what makes the noise inside. It is no longer. There is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man (woman) or even all of our United strength that ever lived could change. Only by faith and the poetry, romance, loyalty and love it creates, can push aside that curtain and view the supernal beauty, glory and grace beyond. Is it all real? Ah Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else more real and binding than our Creator. No God? How quaint and wrong can one be than to not comprehend this? I pray for these people devoid of hope of the now and of our tentative posterity. Yes Virginia, there is a real and true GOD who abides in the light we bask in every moment of the life its essence bequeathed us. As Dennis the Menace said in his evening prayer, one cartoon, “Please take care of yourself, I don’t know what we’d do without you!’ I still enjoy the rendering of a conversation I had with my father driving his ole Singer Sewing Machine Company panel truck with Mom sitting next to him during my 5-6 Beaver Cleaver treasured years (Mom passed with cancer in my 9th year) and me riding shotgun back to Warner Robbins to our home from Macon where he worked. It was near Christmas and I must’ve been seven. I hit them with the inevitable question, “Is there really a Santa Claus?”. They paused, swapped stares and decided since I got a globe on my birthday (June 25th, 6 even months betwixt the event, I had a better perspective on the strategic probability. No they said. It’s time to fess up. I paused and then asked, “ How about the Easter Bunny?”. No, it’s made up. “Well, how about the Tooth Fairy?” No, it’s the adult ploy to get your baby teeth out. After a moment of heavy reflection, I inquired, “Hoe about Jesus?”. I swear I heard a pin drop. They turned white and about gagged. What in the world has come over this chile? My Mother, bless her heart, comforted me with a hug and encouragingly said, “ Darling, He is the one thing you can always really believe in.”. Nuff said. Besides yourself and MERRY CHRISTMAS/HAPPY HOLIDAYS and pray for a peaceful New Year.
P.S. With a request for forgiveness from Virginia O’Hanlon for the contemporary variation of 1897’s original gem. FWL
