Can't We All Just Get Along?

Can't we all just get along?
Good question, for sure.
But history doesn't offer much hope.

Cain killed Able.
Aaron crafted the Golden Calf.
The king threw Jeremiah into the well.

The Apostle Paul's vision of inclusion:
Met heavy resistance in the mother church.
Paul choose grace; others choose to build a wall.

Luther and the Holy Roman Empire and its Holy Church.
The Colonies and Britain.
Hitler and Churchill.

FDR and Big Biz.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and segregation.
Franklin Graham and William Barber.

The fault lines are real, and mostly severe:
The kind of world we choose to own.
The values we uphold.

LGBTQ rights?
Or condem them to exclusion?

The right of a woman to choose abortion?
Or criminalize all of it, and its providers?

Women's rights to life and liberty and limb?
Or the men who would abuse them for power?

NRA?
ERA?

MAGA? or ...
"America! America! God mend thine every flaw"

"We need more time to help some resolve the matter,"
Said I of LGBTQ rights some many years ago.
When a dear friend, said of her gay brother:
"But he has no more time."

Everyone told Martin Luther King, Jr. to be patient.
But too many people were ending up as patients.
Clubbed senseless, or chewed up by dogs.
Burnings, bombings and lynchings.

The Apostle Paul and the mother church never found the middle way.
And the fault lines of exclusion/inclusion remain frustratingly tense.

The Book of Acts tells the tale:
The Mother Church on the one hand.
The Roman Imperial Cult on the other.

Rome and Jerusalem were good together:
When it came to getting rid of Jesus.
And when it came to crushing the gospel.

The cults of Rome and the righteous cicumcized loved large gatherings: where the mob could
Outshout Paul and call for his death.

I hurt for those who seek a middle ground.
A middle way ...
Things upon which we might agree?

Or are we fated/determined/sin-driven:
To be at odds in our quest to be free?