We have seen religious wars before, and we are seeing one yet again, this time between Shia and Sunni Muslims, with the rest of us peripheral casualties, with outsiders like Putin on one side and other outsiders on the opposite side. It will end, but only after the intervention of catastrophe. People tend to believe that the religion they grew up with is the natural beginning and end of religious observance, but of course it is not. Religion has been around since the earliest human creatures became capable of looking at the stars and wondering what they were. At the edge of the ice or the edge of the sea, man has always looked to the stars, to the gods, to explain the blessed, sacred mysteries of the universe.

The sun gods and the gods of ice
Ruled all both far and near
The power to withhold the rice
Held all in trembled fear
The gods of man were many named
And each a sacred tale
And yet with incantation tamed
The servant could prevail
In time the gods were storybook
In which no one believed
And one by one the gods forsook
All who had been deceived
By those who claimed that God was dead
That Reason took His place
And without God we’d forge ahead
As if this were a race
To see who could get to the stars
Or climb the highest peak
Or sail the red canals of Mars
Or will the gods to speak
We have forgotten that the ice
Would once again return
Or that could fail the living rice
And thus we never learn
That ignorance of Mother Earth
The gods of Father Sky
Will take us back to mankind’s birth
Again to wonder why