The Green
Onion Society
open for selected
membership
© 2008 by H.W.
Tony Hearn
"The Green Onion Society" with subtitle
"Get a Good Grip on that Onion!" is the topic for today and, probably,
for many more days to come. I'm declaring the Green Onion will become a
standard ingredient for everyone! Ready?
Let me set forth the fundamental issue – and we're not
tossing up a salad or cooking up a stew. We may be in a stew though – because
of our green onion. Here's the story.
It seems one day there happened to come to rest a
miserably poor person who just managed to come to a precarious rest upon the
backdoor steps leading up from a manicured lawn to a kitchen of a magnificently
moneyed mansion belonging to an enormously wealthy person who prized his
property nestled among the estates of a high-dollar residential community
walled-off securely from a nearby urban area sprawling menacingly outward from
its rotting economic core. The poor person had neither the energy nor the
imagination to venture beyond his position. He sagged sadly. The rich person
spied the incongruent visitor come to rest on the backdoor step of his kitchen
beyond the window of his first-floor paneled study. It greatly perturbed his
peace of mind. He would deal with the impertinence of the social flotsam
invading his domain.
"You must move on from here," the rich person
counseled the disheveled pile of socially dysfunctional humanity from the
kitchen step. "This is no place for you! He repeated the refrain of the
bum's rush he had used so many times when he had encountered some panhandler
interrupting his entering a fancy restaurant in the heart of the city.
"No, and 'no' I haven't anything to give you. Go away!" He stood above
the man at his backdoor safely beyond the latched screen.
It so happened, however, that the poor man barely budged
from his spot. He looked up and moaned a reply. "I can't go on! I'm played
out. I need just a little something to eat. Please, can I have even a
crumb?" The man was uttering the age-old beggar's plea. "Then I will
get out of your place, kind sir. I will respect your rights! I know I don't
belong here!"
Miffed by what seemed an inevitable encounter, the rich
man arched his eyebrows and turned abruptly and said, "Hmmmm! I'll see
what I can come up with to move you on your way!"
The rich man then remembered he had some salad mixings
left over from a brunch he sponsored for some charity gathering hosted at an
earlier society function at his place. He opened his refrigerator and saw in
the lower region of the well-stocked lode of chilled food a large candidate: a
wilted onion. "Aha! This will give the man just enough energy to get him
moving, and it will relieve him of any desire to come back here again!"
"Here, take this and don't come back!" the rich
man said to the poor man. He tossed the large, wilted green onion at the spot
where the poor man huddled below.
"Oh! Thank you so much!" The poor man uttered
in response. He wetted his parched lips with the damp moisture of the wilted
green. "Thank you so very much!" he smiled upward and beyond his
dazed gaze at his benefactor. "This is just what I needed, thank you so
much! This will help me on my way!" The poor man gathered up the strength
to lift himself from the step and began to move away. "Thank you! Thank
you for your kindness!" The poor man ate the wilted green onion and he
left the rich man's premises.
And, now you guessed it. That very night, it so happened
that the angel of death caught up with the poor man who had been nourished by
the wilted green onion. Before he reached the homeless shelter, he died of
basic malnutrition – and a bundle of bad habits he had accumulated over the
course of a clutter of bad life choices.
And, yes, you guessed it. An angel of mercy appeared and
gathered up into his arms the soul of the poor man and carried him into the
beyond and laid him to a final rest in the proverbial bosom of Abraham.
"Peace at last!"
And, yes, you guessed it. Another angel appeared that
same night, and he claimed the life of the other man – the donor of the wilted
veggie! The rich man was carried off from his comfortable bed in his walled
premises, and then dropped, ignominiously without fanfare, into the yawning maw
of the pit of lowest hell! He was damned. His destiny complete!
Or so it would seem! But there is more! While the poor
man slept soundly within Abraham's bosom, the rich man tried in vain to
accommodate himself to the miseries of his newfound place – complete with all
the magnified horrors of the storied hell. He was well stuck within the mire of
misfortune. He was enduring – eternally – it seemed, the predicament of inverse
proportion of the beggar who, too, died that same night.
Except the rich "donor" had a guardian angel up
above in the celestial region who had not totally washed his hands of the
despicable "reject" of the promised land. He actually wept over his
lost charge. "I tried so long to nurture that man's soul. I gave him so
many opportunities to grow in grace and in godly understanding. I tried so
greatly to help him reach beyond the social mannerism of his class – to lead
him in goodness and into the higher understanding." The angel wept when he
peered into hell's hopeless pit and saw his late charge's miserable condition.
And, it so happened his angelic peers took notice of the
sadness of their heavenly companion. "He is greatly troubled! What can we
do to rescue him from such remorse. He has lost his charge! Alas!"
"Aha!" One of the angels had an idea. Let us
ask our friend if he can remember some single act of true kindness shown by the
recently damned individual while he was on earth before his demise. "Think
hard, our friend! Did your charge ever act with true Christian charity? We can
help you plead before the Throne of Judgment and, possibly, get a reprieve for
your lost charge."
The grieving guardian angel searched his memory of the
behavior of the damned soul. He searched and searched over the years of
privilege and power. Nothing, it seemed entered the angel's recollection.
Nothing . . . "Oh! I've got it! Just yesterday, shortly before he died, he
gave a man . . . a very poor man who asked for a morsel of food . . . a cool
refreshment . . . a wilted green onion . . . from his refrigerator of plenty.
Yes, he did that one act of kindness! Whatever his motivation . . . he did that
one act of goodness!"
"Wonderful!" the other angels clustered around
the grieving companion, brightened by the gratuitous recollection. "Here's
what we can do. We can ask 'the power that be' to approve a plan to benefit
your lost charge in hell. We can ask the just judge if we can lower into hell
on a rope the wilted green onion and, with providence, dangle the green onion
before his very doomed eyes. We can yell down below for him to grasp the green
onion and we can struggle to pull him out from his fate. We may lift him free
from Satan's power.
Permission was granted and the angels gathered together
the very long rope and tied the wilted green onion at its terminus. "There,"
the guardian angel was given hope to assuage his sadness. "Let us call
below. 'Grasp the green onion and hold on tightly and we can lift you out of
your circumstance!'" the angel shouted above the roar of the eternal
furnace.
A spark of hope crossed the brow of the damned person.
"There IS mercy, after all!" he surmised. "I will yet get out of
here!" As the wilted green onion came within reach, he grasped it and
began to feel the uplifting power of the angelic heft. "Free at last, good
God almighty, almost free at last," he muttered to himself.
"What good fortune I possess!" He was in the act of
self-congratulation, when he noticed a tugging at his feet!
"Yikes!" he exclaimed. He looked below himself
and he realized two other of the damned in hell had caught him at his ankles
and were also experiencing the uplift. He tightened his grip upon the green
onion.
But the urge to get himself upward possessed him with a
vengeance and he shouted to the two men at his ankles: "Let go of me!
Can't you see, this is my green onion!" He called out! "Let go of
me!" He shook his legs violently. "Let go! I demand, let go of
me!" He was so wrought up, he released with one hand his grip upon his
green onion to try to pry one man's hand from one of his legs to which the man
was trying to reach higher from the flames of hell.
In point of fact, the owner of the wilted green onion and
the other two doomed individuals were actually being lifted out of hell . . .
except for the fitful energy of the donor. "Let GO of me! This is
MY green onion. You're ruining my chance! Let Go, damn you two!" He yelled
with a fury!"
To the anguish of the guardian angel and his peers, the
angel counseled his charge, "Have no mind to those who cling to you! We
can manage to save the others as well as yourself. For the sake of the love and
mercy of God, be patient. Hold on firm! We've almost got you free! Glory be to
God Almighty, you're almost free!"
But, alas, the charge had thought only of himself. He
loosened his other firm grip, and . . . awfully, his hand slipped from the
wilted green onion . . . and, mournfully, he fell back into hell's final hold
upon him . . . and the two others with him.
"Damn!" he shrieked! "Damn those two, who
took advantage of ME and MY own last chance." In anger he kicked at them
as his legs and feet were themselves consumed in the everlasting fire. The
wilted green onion hung limply over the pit before it was lifted out, its
mission sorrowfully unaccomplished!
And that is the sad story of
the wilted green onion.
And now you have the opportunity to grasp that green
onion and use it to some good purpose.
Let me invite you to join "The Green Onion
Society." Get a firm grip upon it! And let me hear from you!
Sequel to
The Green Onion Society
The higher understanding of The
Green Onion Society is to reach out not in desperation
for a wilted green union lowered by a concerned guardian angel who cares enough
to rescue me from my deserved fate down in horrid hell, but, instead,
to grasp MY green onion
firmly, and then to pass it lovingly to another soul desperately clutching
for anything by which he can be lifted from his destiny among the
damned. And then to call out to the angels above: "Send
that onion back down, I've got another candidate for rescue!" And then
another, and another, and another, till you have helped the angels rob
hell of its prey.
This is the purpose of The
Green Onion Society. If you understand this lesson, you
won't fear hell and all its terrors. You will be protected from the fires
burning all around you. Even though you may be the last one lifted out
of hell, you've already arrived in heaven to give a hand to help
your guardian angel and his companions!