Common Ground

Please note this was written the night before the incident in Washington DC on January 6, 2021.

I am done…seriously. I am done with the whining, I am done with the denying, I am done with the anger. Most of my family and a pile of my friends, know I’m a “bleeding heart liberal”. But most of them at least still love me despite my “sinful ways”. And I should know, my father-in-law tells me he loves me and prays for me every Sunday. It’s like when my Mom would tell me, she burned letters for me every day to God. That’s the kind of conservatism and Christianity I appreciate. 

But over the last several years I’ve noticed a new intolerant kind of religious stance that’s taken over America. That kind that sounds eerily familiar to the rantings of other intolerant religions. I like to believe in the good of people. I like to think all faiths have some inherent good in each of them. But like I said, I’m just done with the shouting. Give me a valid reason why your way is better than mine. Be willing to listen and compromise. Turn off the rhetoric and fear, and give me the honest truth.
 
Listen the young woman that cuts my hair is as conservative and religious as they come. But we have a whole lot in common. She loves to laugh, she needs to feel love, and she tells a great story. She enterprising, enthusiastic, and loves those she loves. Why can’t we all be that way? This life can be really sad when all you live for is control and domination. It means you live in anger; it means you live in fear. Let’s all be a little more patient with one other. Let’s give everyone the benefit of the doubt, at least in the beginning. I’m so tired of the hate and the banter, that I’m just about ready to shut it all off. Breathe for a moment and listen to the voices and not the shouting.