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Bare Trees in Fog

Have you heard the not so Good News?

Writer's picture: Marie LaureMarie Laure

Updated: Jan 16, 2024


I heard yesterday that the reason some people would be voting in the upcoming Presidential election for a criminal on the run was that God has chosen this man at this time in American History to lead the free world. Mon Dieu! Let’s just say unequivocally that this goes against all notions of separation of church and state on which these here United States was founded. Anyone with an eighth grade education learned that fact no matter what part of the country you got your upbringing.


When I was growing up in the industrial Northeast, I was taught principles of the Catholic tradition by nuns who spoke about God working in “mysterious ways,” while they simultaneously taught about the pilgrims who risked their lives to leave an oppressive homeland because of an imposed religion by their government in England. Those men, women, and children chose to migrate across a vast open ocean in rickety wooden boats to escape (sound familiar?) and begin a NEW England without religion at the seat or heart of their chosen Government. If we remember that one fundamental elementary school lesson that was taught to all Americans whether on the Prairies, in the South or Back East, we understand that choosing our freely elected leader is squarely at the center of separation of church and state. However and by whomever those basic facts were taught there was no ambiguity in the founding principle that our government would be separate and apart from any religious beliefs.This principle has defined the United States going forward from the original thirteen colonies to today’s fifty separate states spread geographically from sea to shining sea.


Given these facts, established and presumably accepted as truth by all citizens of the United States, it comes as not so good news that God would be the one choosing the highest officer of the land usurping the will of the people! When President Thomas Jefferson held that esteemed office he wrote in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association that the First Amendment . . .”built a wall of separation between church and state.” A wall!


Years later, in 1947, in a Supreme Court case, Justice Hugo Black wrote: “The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state which must be kept high and impregnable.”* Walls seem to be a constant in our History and in the collective psyche from our third President to the highest court in the land, and to this day as part of the political debate. If we break it down, so to speak, walls can be seen as the one thing that Americans put up to protect ourselves against something or someone we deem as a significant threat to our personal freedom as citizens of a free country. When the wall is breached, it brings a threat inside the democratic system most especially the democratic voting system that is meant to allow for everyone's coveted and cherished right to vote. To cavalierly toss that right to high heaven as if the choice is not of one's own free will, is to believe that an election is a fait accompli prior to election day. If that is the case, why bother to hold a fair and free election? Why would anyone but the chosen one be on the ballot? Why would citizens from across this vast country bother to stand in line in the snow in subfreezing temperatures? Or, in the heat of the day? Or, through the night, if necessary? Why bother at all with separating church and state as proclaimed at the outset by the the oppressed who came for this very reason?


Don't get me wrong, I'm all for God. Yet, when Americans step into the voting booth free from duress from the government, we each have the right and responsibility to choose between candidates who tell us beforehand why they want and deserve either me or you to choose them to be the officer in charge of our country. We vote accordingly, and not by any other means.







*FreedomForum.org What is Separation of a Church and State?

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© 2023 by Marie Laure

​Six Stages of Pilgrimage:

  • The Call:

  • The opening clarion of any spiritual journey. Often in the form of a feeling or some vague yearning, a fundamental human desire: finding meaning in an overscheduled world somehow requires leaving behind our daily obligations. Sameness is the enemy of spirituality.

  • The Separation:

  • Pilgrimage, by its very nature, undoes certainty. It rejects the safe and familiar. It asserts that one is freer when one frees oneself from daily obligations of family, work, and community, but also the obligations of science, reason, and technology.

  • The Journey:

  • The backbone of a sacred journey is the pain and sacrifice of the journey itself.  This personal sacrifice enhances the experience; it also elevates the sense of community one develops along the way.

  • The Contemplation:

  • Some pilgrimages go the direct route, right to the center of the holy of holies, directly to the heart of the matter. Others take a more indirect route, circling around the outside of the sacred place, transforming the physical journey into a spiritual path of contemplation like walking a labyrinth.

  • The Encounter:

  • After all the toil and trouble, after all the sunburn and swelling and blisters, after all the anticipation and expectation comes the approach, the sighting. The encounter is the climax of the journey, the moment when the traveler attempts to slide through a thin veil where humans live in concert with the Creator.

  • The Completion and Return:

  • At the culmination of the journey, the pilgrim returns home only to discover that meaning they sought lies in the familiar of one's own world. "Seeing the place for the first time . . ."

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