5 “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”
— William Butler Yeats

“But things don’t just fall apart, people break them.”
—Robin Wasserman


It is increasingly difficult for this American, and perhaps for you too, to feel that our nation is at a pivotal moment in our history, a moment at which we are deciding which direction we want to take as a nation. Harvard
Historian Jill Lepore’s astounding book, “These Truths,” posits that the United States was founded on two contradictory pillars — the idea of natural rights and liberty and the reality of human slavery. She goes on for 29 hours in the audiobook version to explain how these truths have shaped us since 1619 and continue to shape us today.

The innate tension between these two pillars has rarely been clearer than today in our divided nation. Two wildly controversial issues make this division crystal clear.
Since America decided, after the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass murders in 2012, that our guns, especially military-grade assault weapons, are more important to us than our children, mass shootings have become so commonplace that we hardly notice them. The Washington Post reports more than 300 mass shootings in the United States in 2022, about 20 since the Uvalde Elementary School murders in late May. Ask yourself how many of those you are even aware of, much less knowledgeable about.

Shocking as mass shootings used to be, the numbers of people injured and killed in them pale compared to the everyday gun-related deaths across the country — murders, accidents and suicides. If we define mass shootings as those in which at least four people die, they account for less than 1% of all gun deaths, yet our reaction to this is increasingly “ho hum.” We are the only nation with more guns than people, 393 million to 330 million, according to a 2018 report by the Small Arms Survey. This imbalance will only grow as we Americans have been on a gun-buying spree since COVID began, and we can now manufacture our own, do-it-yourself unregistered weapons at home.

And then there is the other divisive issue, a woman’s right to control her own body, a right recently rescinded by a highly politicized U.S. Supreme Court decision. No matter what side of the abortion issue one falls on, it is impossible not to acknowledge some of the absurdity of the current situation. Some states ban abortion altogether, recognizing a fetus as a person.

A pregnant woman in Texas took advantage of this point of view by driving in the High Occupancy Lane of a freeway. When a law enforcement officer pulled her for being the only person in the car, she announced that her unborn child was a person under Texas law, making her HOV driving legal. The officer ticketed her anyway, and her court date falls on her due date.
Internet memes take this legal head-butting even further by encouraging Americans to call the IRS and demand a tax deduction for their fetus, for pregnant women who are imprisoned to sue for wrongful imprisonment of their fetus, to check with the Fire Marshall on occupancy regulations because pregnant women now count as two people and to demand life and health insurance for their fetuses. In other words, a fetus is either a person, or it isn’t. We cannot have it both ways.

This American is sad, alarmed and apprehensive about our nation’s future. We must find ways to dial down the heat in our national conversations, respect each other even when we disagree and get out of our silos and actually talk to each other.

Marianne Williamson, author, spiritual leader, activist and 2020 presidential candidate, said this, “don’t be concerned that things appear to be falling apart: This has to happen for something new and wonderful to emerge.”

I hope and pray she is right.

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