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How Does One Form A More Perfect Union?

I haven’t written a letter to any politician in at least two months. Honestly, I have trouble even replying to emails, these days. I keep trying to write articles that offer up some new perspective on the events that surround us all…but they become garbled messes on my computer screen, and eventually I consign them to the “recycle” bin, where they undoubtedly belong. I gaze at the eye-aching white of my screen, and wish the heaviness in my heart would go away.

I can’t get over the feeling that everything is already out there. Everything has been said before, argued before, offered up in some form or another before. I can’t get past the fact that the facts seem so clear, so indisputable, and yet somehow they are not being recognized by enough people to make a difference. Without a galvanizing force, the indignation of a few becomes a dull murmur and in the end, the world does indeed end not with a bang, but with a whimper.

This is the state of the union as I see it:

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Effective Magic: Hybrid Religions and Social Advancement

 

In the United States, we are intimately familiar with the “melting pot” philosophy. Being mostly a country of immigrants, we began with a blending of cultures. Over the years, we just kept adding to it. Everyone who comes here adds something and we are all better for it. Though there has been tussling along the way, and a lot of angling for control of the melody, overall we do all right…until religion enters the picture.

It doesn’t matter what religion, really. America is certainly primarily a Christian country, but we’ve got some of everything. We even have the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The problem is that no one seems to take a “melting pot” philosophy to religion. The Presbyterians stay in their churches, completely sure that their version of Christianity is the right one, the Jews go to the synagogue and hold tightly to their version of the Truth. The Muslims visit their mosques and hope they aren’t viewed as fanatics by their neighbors, while the Wiccans find secluded fields for their rituals under the moon. I get solicitations in my mail for the “right” church for me, and radio stations point me in the way of the True Church of Jesus on a regular basis. All we are doing with this “One True God” nonsense is holding ourselves, as individuals and a culture, back. You can’t make stone soup with just rocks.

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