My latest Nanowrimo effort is a story about a group of quilters and their husbands who had a dream for their retirement. They wanted to retire in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and open a quilt shop. When they found the old Artesian Well Water Company Building, a classic old brick building that started it's life as a school house but has lain empty for nearly 40 years, they thought they'd found their dream.
But even before they moved in things began to happen. One of the painters painting the trim just under the 40 foot high roof mysteriously fell from the scaffolding and injured his back. Then more things started to happen, freak accidents, shelves full of bolts of fabric turned over as if they had been in an earthquake. Books flinging themselves across the room. Apparitions appearing in the alcove, in the long-arm room, and in the basement.
Not willing to give up on their dream, the six people decide to ignore the problem and even to make concessions to keep the more violent things from happening. They form a theory that whoever is haunting the quilt shop doesn't like it when they say prayers out loud.
So instead, they go out into the field behind the house, through the forest to the north and do their praying and meditating, in nature, the way God intended. In doing they wake some spirits who reside there.
It seems that a major spiritual upheaval is in the making, one that has many layers of descent. These three couples have unknowingly opened up a wound that has been festering for more than a hundred years. An injury wrought by people like them who had good intentions but who operated under the assumption that their way was the only way, and could not see that the people they were trying to help didn't need or want their help.
The theme of this book is tolerance for others religions. We have freedom of religion in this country. It is a right protected by our government. We also have the separation of Church and State, which means that our government cannot be run by or have any association with one particular religion. This is why everyone is free to worship in their own way, the two things that guarantee that right. My answer to all "Christians" who think it's a travesty that their children can't pray in school is this: if you really want your children to express their religion in school then don't send them to a state run school. Send them to a school run by your religion. If you want a free education, then you just have to abide by the rules of our government.
Religious intolerance has always been a raspberry seed in my wisdom tooth. I've always seen evangelism as a true evil in our society. But I console myself with the phrase, "A person convinced against their will, is of their same opinion still."
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