Yesterday our long planned three week road trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, to my hometown, and then to South Carolina began.

On I65 running north and south, in Indiana farmland we passed this sign prominently installed by the side of the road.  The message communicated with unmistakable clarity.  I was reminded of my family heritage, that I once believed that hell and heaven, sin and salvation were substantially real.  Hell — as real as the hot aluminum engine under the hood, proving any number of the “laws” of physics as we are transported by our vehicle to our destination.

The notion that hell is literally real, is an idea used to fashion consciousness, to create an awareness of self, and by extension — a “world” where that idea and all of it’s attendant ideas are at home.  This imaginary world has “purity” as the aspirational hallmark.  It is a fantastical world of white Caucasian male dominance.  In this world women are second class.  Moreover people of color, being less pure have no voice, and are slowly disenfranchised of the vote.  The world envisioned by “hell is real” is impervious to human efforts at improvement by secular education.  It is a fallen world riven by fanatical ideology, such as the Pro-Life movement which is materially brutal to women, legally depriving them of agency.  The “trial and error” world into which we all were born — is despised.  It becomes a deregulated zone of plunder where the strong take what they will.

This, I submit is what is “in mind” by all of those entertaining the conviction that “hell is real.”  This future which awaits all of us, should they prevail.

This I know with complete certainty.

How is it possible to fail to notice that the story of humankind is one of tragedy?

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Do we not need a song to hold onto?

The Wind Cries Mary

After all the jacks are in their boxes
And the clowns have all gone to bed
You can hear happiness staggering on down the street
Footprints dressed in red

And the wind whispers, “Mary”

A broom is drearily sweeping
Up the broken pieces of yesterday’s life
Somewhere, a queen is weeping
Somewhere, a king has no wife

And the wind, it cries, “Mary”

The traffic lights, they turn blue tomorrow
And shine their emptiness down on my bed
The tiny island sags downstream
‘Cause the life that lived is dead

And the wind screams, “Mary”

Will the wind ever remember
The names it has blown in the past?
And with this crutch, its old age and its wisdom
It whispers, “No, this will be the last”

And the wind cries, “Mary”

Songwriters: Jimi Hendrix