Writing history

"I returned to the image of the ruined Temple in Nauvoo-the piles of stone, the column holding up nothing, the chipped piece of the baptismal font. Did any sect or creed, any group of men, deserve such a fate? I believed in everything I said at the lectern, I knew it was true. Surely Brigham, when he stands before his people, would say the same. He believes everything he says, and he knows it is true. How to reconcile our competing truths? By obliterating one? Is it the only way? I turned the question this way and that, doing my best to look at it from each end, pressing upon its points, and I began to feel anxious. Perhaps the Temple ruins were not a symbol of the Mormons' fate, but my own. If one side must be right, and the other wrong, how could I be so certain of everything I knew? Inevitably we were both right, and both wrong, or was this not true? It was a circular question, like an iron hoop, and I could trace my finger along it, around and around and never reach its end. I fumbled with this idea for a long time, losing my grasp on my beliefs, until the early sun came through the fog, and the streets illuminated with the goodness of day." --David Ebershoff, The 19th Wife

This passage from this wonderful book really struck me yesterday. These are the questions that I have in my mind about politics today. Not only is there a great clash of cultures right now regarding the healthcare debate but I feel the same clash in my own heart and mind. Later in the book she realizes that polygamy is actually the straw that breaks the camel's back and that she can only save the church from itself rather than burn it down. Very interesting book that I am enjoying reading.