OPEN MINDS ARE NEEDED
Jim Hite

Much of the television we enjoy at home is due to the fact that we have a VCR! As we are gone most evenings during the week and over most weekends, being able to record programs we enjoy or which look interesting is a marvel of this modern era!

This happened a few weeks ago when Hallmark Channel presented a three-hour movie on Marco Polo. In both grade (i.e., elementary) school and high school world history classes, he was a pivotal figure whose writings about China fascinated the western world of the late 13th and early 14th century.

Polo traveled overland to China and remained there for several years in the service of Kubla Khan, grandson of the Mongol warrior Genghis Khan. The movie, a dramatization based on his writings, was interesting and fairly well done. But there were several thoughts that came to me while watching that I would like to share.

In the opening scene, Polo is dying and a priest is attempting to persuade him to admit that what he has written are lies and that if he did not, he would lose his immortal soul. For the world as Polo described it did not match up with the world as understood in Venice and Genoa in the early 14th century.

Polo replies that what he is telling the people in these city-states in Italy about China is the truth, although it is not the truth they want to hear. His descriptions of those civilizations in Persia, Afghanistan and China showed cultures beyond the pale of the west at that time. These cultures had different ways of life, different inventions and different approaches to God.

In later years, Galileo, Copernicus and others would suffer the same sort of reproach from the establishment, both church and state, when they presented ideas at odds with prevailing thought.

Looking back from our perch in the 21st century, we may find it difficult to understand how so many could be so blind.

But then, maybe, it is not so difficult to understand. In fact, I would say that there is still much blindness in our world, both near and far.

How many there are who are so closed up in their own world that they cannot see the wonders our world, our universe contains! Ideas that upset preconceived concepts are rejected, ridiculed out of hand. And so many are actually schooled in prejudice and ignorance that they cannot see or worse, do not even want to see.

What is it that causes people to fear what is different? What is it that causes people to dismiss any idea with which they do not agree? What is it that causes people to decide that God is on their side, that God agrees with their ideas, and therefore those who think differently are condemned forever?

Our world is filled with hatred of that which is different. We can notice it daily, in the media, in conversations, even from the pulpit. Fear and ignorance abound among those who are self-satisfied, so sure of themselves that human and psychological growth is impossible.

In one of her mysteries, author Agatha Christie's famous detective, Hercule Poirot, laments being surrounded by closed minds.

This lament is valid today. It is a frequent cry of those calling for openness, for understanding, for an end to the bitterness and self-righteous demagoguery that characterizes far too much of our national and international dialogue, both political and religious.

And, might I add, our local dialogue within those same arenas.

Just as Polo was excoriated for upsetting the status quo, for bringing new ideas to his world, even to the extent of being told he would lose his immortal soul, so it is today some eight centuries later. Narrowness of outlook parades as virtue, attacking what is new and/or different is seen as protecting all that is sacred and good, often with the clinching argument that this is what God says.

However, a continuing, lifelong effort to discover all we are able of what this world contains is a noble endeavor, one that provides continued spiritual and intellectual growth, whatever one's age.

Widening our horizons and seeking to learn more, never being satisfied with our mental and spiritual status quo, being open to all of creation, all these combine to keep us from the cocoon of a "closed mind."

May this be our choice, day by day.