NOTE: Just so everyone knows, Tillman and I have actually spoken on the phone. I'm preceding my post with this so you can read with a final decision on my identity intact. I'm pretty sure that by know, Tillman knows I'm as real as they come, so that's [hopefully] my final word on the subject.

While I was MIA, I had a lot of time to ponder the big stuff. Frankly, religion is starting to annoy me. You know those pesky Palestinians? They wouldn't even know that they are 'supposed' to be at war with the Israelis if it weren't for some goddamn prophecy in the Koran. And back here, on the soil that really matters, pro life activists are killing abortionists in the name of God. Yeah....really doesn't make a lot of sense. I guess you really don't have time to sit down and consider if your actions are rational when your too busy protesting at the funeral of a teenage boy who was murdered for being gay with signs that feature such catchy slogans as 'Your son is burning in hell.'

Sometimes I'm not sure if anything has any religious significance at all. The parish church I went to in elementary school was defiled a few times, which were the first inklings I had that other people might just think of it as a place, same as the grocery store. I was even more weirded out when I asked my mother why she never received Eucharist. She told me that it had always seemed cannibalistic to her. Truth be told, I had felt the same way. I never really liked the quarter dollar sized 'bread' and avoided the wine. When Father Greg started in with the "This is my body...." I would always look around. My friends and I were already cracking up b/c the dude was singing, but I was wondering if anyone else found it crazy that this guy actually believed he was close enough to God to change these foodstuffs into Him. Not that I didn't have things to be faithful for. Church usually meant missing Math and Social Studies.

Maybe I'm just ranting now, but try to understand me. I, and the better part of my friends and family all wear crosses. But do you really think that if/when Christ comes back, he wants to see another freakin cross?? The Bible says that there 'are many paths'. I think that if anyone is gonna pay attention to the Good Book, why not pay attention to that as opposed to things that supposedly condemn gays, abortion, witches, women, going to the bathroom, etc. That might be the best Bible excerpt since that 'turn the other cheek' stuff. Harder said than done.

Personally, the one thing that might have shot my more or less intact faith to well, hell, was an accident that came very close to ending the life of someone I know. In elementary school, there was a program where the volunteering seventh graders were separated into different groups, and one various days of the week, we would spend our lunch period giving the kindergarten teachers some free time by entertaining the kids. We ate lunch with them, read, played games, whatever. There was one kid, who I'm not gonna name, who became my charge mostly b/c the minute I walked into the bright little kindergarten rooms with its 'paintings' hanging up everywhere and its minuscule chairs, would jump on me. He pretty much hung onto me for that period every Thursday, and it was a lot of fun.

During one morning's announcements/prayers we were all asked to pray for him b/c he'd been in a car accident. I became head of a collection to pay for his medical bills, but I didn't see him again until the next years Olympics. [my school's cheesy annual sports events]

His parents had brought him in his wheelchair. There was some lifeless body where this energetic kid used to be, and now he was good as dead, to be blunt. My friends and I had always predicted he would be a heartbreaker when he grew up. Now a lot of hearts have been broken, I guess. I really didn't want to hear that 'these things happen.' That child was one of God's Innocents if there is such a thing. I figured that if there was no hope for him, then what the hell am I doing?

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