A devout Christian friend of mine shoved me into going full atheist in my early 20s. Family troubles had besieged me for most of my teens up till the point I decided to up and leave in my mid-20s. Every time something unpleasant happened in the family, at least one person in my social circle would ask me to pray about it. This friend was different. He asked me "Do you believe in god?."
To which I gave my standard hesitant reply, "uhh.. maybe a bit."
"There's no little bit when it comes to this, you either believe or you don't," he replied in a tone that remained steady regardless of what he was talking about.
"I guess I don't," I replied, and that was the last time I thought about god for a while. Curiously enough, people stopped telling me to pray on it as well. I suppose my prayer was answered.
I still went to church every now and then. Not on Sundays, but on the weekdays when there was no mass. In a city that offered no respite from people and noise, the churches existed in a different realm of reality. They were quiet and impeccably clean for a space open to the general public 7 days a week. The weekday crowd in a church in south India is usually the creme de la creme of the meek and the exploited. I sat there along with the others, several of whom looked like they had been there for days, visibly distraught and crying. They looked like they were holding onto an invisible thin thread that held them back from a pit of insanity. The quiet helped. Perhaps seeing how bad the human condition could get and silently acknowledging that in the presence of others also helped.
When I moved to the US, the friends who asked me to pray were replaced by giant billboards that extolled me to give a call to find god. "How about you pray" was replaced by "Maybe you should go to therapy."
I always try to live in a neighborhood with at least three good walks, and on my long walks, I stop when I see a church. Then, I walk up to the door and pull on the handle, and I've never found a single one open.
There is a theological seminary near where I live right now. The walk to the seminary goes through an open green field, then it narrows into a path between cedar trees, and across from a narrow walking bridge sits several old brick and stone buildings that belong to the seminary. I've walked by there several times but never found anyone inhabiting the space. I've tried several doors in different buildings, and none have opened. The closest human interaction I had in the compound was walking past an old man supporting a single-gear bike in one hand and smoking a joint with the other. He turned his face away from me when I walked towards him on my way in and out. As I walked past him, I idly wondered whether I still thought about god because I'm still searching for the elusive sanctuary whose doors were open.
i like how me and shreeda were the first to like this one