I spent a few days at a family reunion out where my people are from. I caught a glimpse of an abortive America.

It was an aristocratic America, but to understand what I mean, you must reject everything lacy and coiffed and rich about the term aristocratic.

I mean deep pride in your family name and your ancestors. Deep pride in the places they built. The literal structures that they built, and the farms and the irrigation systems and the ways of life. Deep pride even in their scandals. Not pride in the sense of “son, I’m proud of you.” Spanish hidalgo pride.

(and, of course, there is the hereditary right to bear arms . . .)

That isn’t the country we live in. If it were, we’d live in a different America, better in some ways, worse in others.

I believe that the tremendous variety of human ways of being is delightful to God.