Beauty is all around us, all you have to do is look for it
I see beauty every Sunday in church. A family of middle aged siblings and their spouses lovingly help their aged and frail parents get seated, and then help then down the aisle and back for communion. They've got a system of getting the wheel chair for mom and bringing it around, helping dad with his cane, but not too much, and getting the chair folded up and everybody back seated in their pews.
I know many of us struggle to see that beauty, in ourselves, in others, in our country. Unending wars, crushing debt, shouting and anger... We're broke. Financially, but not yet spiritually, but we are close.
Our salvation won't come from DC republicans or democrats. It will have to come from us. From our families and our communities.
Fuzzy Slippers posted a video yesterday that made me cry, and I wasn't even drunk at the time. The people of Grand Rapids Michigan produced a video of them and their city to the tune of Don McLean's American Pie. It is an awesome display of civic pride and it's a beautiful slice of America. Optimistic, happy, but humble.
These are people who cannot be broken. This is America
America is being crushed by the nationalization of everything and the inevitable partisan clashes that go with it. National politics now poisons every corner of our lives. It is embittering us and pitting us against one another.
Local efforts used to take on their own local flavor, most often non-partisan, or at least without the screaming ideological anger we see now. In that video are democrats, republicans, conservatives, liberals, moderates, people of various religions and beliefs, human beings.
We lost our innocence on 9/11. We became hard and angry, and we turned it on our enemies in righteous vengeance. But we also turned it on ourselves, and we ceded too much to an overweening federal government, forgetting how to do for ourselves and our neighbors.
We've lost it, but we can get it back.
* - Big H/T to Fuzzy Slippers I apologize for stealing your idea, Fuzzy, but this really struck a chord with me
