Had a "vision" of the two general ways that people are viewing the complicated situation happening in our country today (and the rest of the world to varying degrees). It involves jigsaw puzzles. Humor me for a minute.

Imagine that everyone was in a Jigsaw Puzzle Club. Each club was voluntary and approached their puzzle assembly different. You usually started in the club your circle invited you to, but you could change if the approach there wasn't a fit for you.

Both clubs start the same. Everyone meets for a couple of hours each today and starts trying to put together a picture of current events. It's difficult because there is no box top to guide the way. At the end of the meeting the puzzle is left on the table in the room with all of the loose pieces waiting for the next day.

This is where the 2 groups differ.

On day 2, the first group comes back to it's puzzle and, to their surprise, it is completely finished and on display for everyone to admire and soak in the complete picture. Off to the side of the large room another table has been set up and the admirers begin to notice another puzzle about another event scattered and waiting to be put together. As the marvel of the first picture begins to fade, members begin to move from the completed picture and start on the new puzzle of a new event. Every day the pattern repeats. The next day the new event puzzle is completely assembled by the time the club meets. Members now have multiple complete pictures to view, admire, and memorize while the next puzzle waits off to the side to be started when the admiration session ends. Some puzzles hold the attention of the members longer than others, but as the days go by, there is always a new event puzzle waiting to capture the attention of the club members. No one knows who assembles the puzzles between meetings or if the puzzles are put together properly, but it doesn't matter because the attraction of the club becomes the picture that is given to them.

On day 2, the second group comes back to their puzzle only to find that the 1000 piece puzzle is now 2000 pieces. They immediately go to work checking to see if the work from the previous day was still correct considering all of the new pieces. They make corrections as needed and continue trying to put the bigger picture together. This repeats each day. The puzzle is never finished. This gets very frustrating and even causes some impatient members to switch groups. The remaining members are even more determined to connect all of the pieces in the appropriate spots. As the days go by, they notice the picture is changing. In fact, what they thought the event picture would be days ago slowly becomes a collection many different events all in the same picture. It ends up becoming a giant collage and slowly some of the various events connect. Connecting them all becomes the struggle but it also keeps them coming back everyday. Each time the picture is near completion, more pieces to the puzzle suddenly appear. Most times these help, but sometimes it adds another different event waiting to be connected.

Each group becomes convinced that their approach is best and they are "right", to the point of sometimes belittling the other group. Group 1 calls group 2 "Conspiracy Theorists" and group 2 calls group 1 "Sheep". I am firmly in group 2 and I have been since I first saw the movie JFK. At the same time I pray that if I turn out to be wrong that I will have the humility to realize it and admit it. I also pray that if I'm right, my friends and family in group 1 will have the same humility. I'm not sure there is going to be a winner in this puzzling situation but I pray we don't all end up losers.