What Word?

My roommate and I were talking about The Poisonwood Bible, which she just started and I happen to love. Which lead to a discussion of Kerouac (?). Which morphed into Bible talk. She is a kinda-sorta Catholic, and I'm a no-good, usedtobe Christian. She refers to the Old Testament as "the time when God was really mean," and thought that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were the survivors of some sort of apostle-slaughter that occurred around the same time as the crucifixion. I'm no Bible scholar, but I told her that I had read the Bible through, twice. She asked me when in the world I had time for that.

Here's my confession: My senior year, I graduated early and spent the spring semester losing twenty pounds and reading the Bible. And I made dinner for my parents every night.

Looking back, I think about all of the rad things I could've done with that time. I could've trained for a triathlon (bucketlist item). Or gone to Sasquatch. Or gotten a job. Or applied to more than one college and even more scholarships. Instead, my kitten and I got really close and I found out who I think Jesus really is and renounced organized religion.

(sorry...)

It's kind of cool. Not a lot of people have read the Bible, let alone any other cornerstone religious texts. But I feel I can count myself a conscientious objector to the hypocrisy that I feel runs deep through Christianity. I don't really want to piss anyone off or get into a closed circuit debate, so just consider this. I think Jesus was a real guy. And he was a revolutionary. And I think he wanted people to follow his example so that they would see humanity as a giant community in the hope that everyone would take care of each other. I'm not convinced that he was the Messiah, and my beliefs about God, or some sort of divine manifestation, are still up in the air.

It's Easter, or was, and my childhood memories of sunrise services and resurrection stories have me full of religiosity I guess. My original Bible study pointed me away from Christianity, a place where few practice what they preach.I didn't mean for it to happen that way, and I've calmed down since then. Now, I miss the community of church, a place where, at least on the surface, everyone is there for the same reason. I've been church-hopping lately, but I've mostly found places where face-melting guitar solos and free lattes entice you to become a believer. For now, I guess, I'll stick with the serenity found in meditative solitude by the river, in the gully on the backside of Mt. Jumbo.

Happy soul-searching, GSS. (Everyone's doing it)