WARNING: You may encounter triggering language.

I don’t usually go on a rant, but here goes.

Waiting to pull into the car wash, I had plenty of time to reflect on the bumper sticker on the car ahead of me. America. Love it or leave it. What does that even mean?

The week before, I tried to choke down my lunch while staring at the bumper sticker in front of me that declared, You should be grateful, you could have been aborted. What does one even do with that?

And how about these equally polarizing pearls of wisdom:

Proud to be Everything a Republican Hates

When I die, don’t let me vote Democrat

I think, therefore I vote: Democrat

Unvaccinated Conservative Meat Eating Gun Owner: How else can I offend you today?

For the love of whatever we might all hold dear, what are we doing? How did we become so divided from and at odds with our fellow citizens? How did we become so completely us vs them? Decide that we’re right, you’re wrong, and if you don’t agree with us, then you are the f-ing problem?

I’ll tell you one thing. Inflammatory bumper stickers aren’t helping us get out of the mess for which we are all, in part, responsible. Generally, they are statements of what the driver of that vehicle claims as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

So help me God, I am beginning to see these types of bumper stickers as cowardly statements from which one can drive away, leaving no room for curiosity, conversation, connection, conversion, compromise, or collaboration. Which, by the way, are the only ways out from the rock and the hard place between which we are all stuck.

So let’s bump the sticker, roll up our Amercian sleeves, and get to work to building, re-building, building for the first time, take your pick, an imperfect country that we can all love in our own unique ways, and that makes room for and takes care of us all.

Thanks for listening.