Amen

Yesterday was Sunday. Sundays always seem a bit different from any other day of the week. Sunday means football in autumn. It used to mean going out drinking in the afternoon when I was younger. When I was really young, Sunday evening meant that I had precious little time left to do that homework we were assigned on Friday. Sometimes I still get that horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. That feeling I got when I went to bed knowing I wouldn't have anything to hand in to the teacher the next morning. The good thing about being an adult, is that I can have a couple of drinks now to make it go away. What I never, ever, liked about Sunday, was going to church. I hated church. In the summer it was hotter than hell, kind of like that threat of eternal damnation they tried to scare me with. I still remember sitting in Saint George Church with those big stained glass windows propped open, while the giant fans on either side of the altar roared like airplane engines. It didn't matter that you couldn't hear the priest over the roar, because the Mass was all in Latin, a dead language that I didn't understand anyway. They tell me the church is air conditioned now. I still won't go.

Religion still mystifies me. Other than being a means to control people, I don't see any reason for it. Sure they have great architecture, the music can be heavenly, and some of the rituals are entertaining, but what do you get out of it other than being a member of a big social club. They say it's the path to heaven, but what the hell is heaven? If all it is, is hanging around with a bunch of goody two shoes, then it sounds boring. If I were to invent a religion, it would involve reincarnation. In my religion dead people would come back as a newborn baby, and with each incarnation you would subconsciously retain the higher levels of learning and culture that you picked up in the previous lives. I say that because I now realize that as I grow older, I appreciate things that meant nothing to me when I was younger. At least once a day I think to myself, If only I knew what I know now when I was twenty. So that's why I could go for that reincarnation thing. The only problem with that is when I crunch the numbers. There are a lot more people alive now than were alive a hundred years ago, and I would have to make up all kinds of stories to account for that. Just like a real religion.