and it's raining

I went to Ana's after work. Her and Luis were helping me pick pieces for my portfolio. And then Ana and I watched the movie "Priest" (one of a bunch of brilliant movies I lent her because I wanted to redeem myself after forcing her to watch the embarassment that is "Devour" just because Jensen Ackles is far from hard on the eyes, I'm bad, I know...)

After the movie all three of us, well the two of them more so than I, I kind of soaked their words in for most of it as I'm wont to do, entered into this discussion about religion and the Catolic Church, and as I was walking between buses on my way home just now I got to thinking...

How do you challenge a system of belief that seems to allow or overlook Evil when the belief is in Good? How do you seperate the belief from the structure? And for that matter, who decides what's good and what's evil in the first place? Man makes the rules obviously, society, religious institutions, even history as a learning example, and we change the rules as we go along, each time more passionate about them than the time before, desperate to believe that this time we got it right. And we reject, hurt and kill one another in the process of this recreation, or redefinition, or whatever you want to call it, and for what exactly?

And then I got to thinking... Is it anarchy that we fear so much? To have no guidence, no higher power be it devine or another human being in power to look to, that looks out for us, that knows our own good, that overlooks our flaws and forgives us and loves us anyway, that walks alongside us holding our hand so that we don't stray and get lost? Are we that unsure of ourselves? Are we that terrified to be alone? To accept the fact that we entered into this world alone, and when the time comes for us to check out we'll do so alone, and if we do the math, if we really stop to think about it (putting aside society, friends, family, whatever souls happen to be walking this earth at the same time as us) what you do with the time in between is entirely on you, so essentially... you're on your own. Alone.

So is that it? Are we just scared, lost and lonely, waiting for the angels to land, for Peter Pan to take us back to Neverland with him?

Religion fascinates me. My family is not religious at all, my parents left the church of Sweden (which is protestant christian by the way) and let us kids decide for ourselves when we were at the age of confirmation whether we wanted to join or not, so I don't have that in my luggage from home the way most people do, so for me religion is a very foregin concept, but it has always intrigued me. I actually was christian for a whole week, but that's when I was seven so it was way before I had to make my decision and when the time came it was an easy one, but yeah, I prayed every night before going to bed for seven days. I don't remember this, but my mum has told me, well mocked me rather, about it.

My spiritual journey was fairly simple in a way. I could see the pros and cons of each religious practice, but it didn't make sense to me that the structure for faith or belief would even have a pros and con system, so it didn't add up. At one point I thought maybe I was an atheist, but then that didn't make sense either, because it feels like there should be more outside of the frame and like I'm just missing a piece of the puzzle. But the piece wasn't religion, because as far as I was concerned you can't pick and choose what details you like and dislike, it's a package deal. And as with everything in life, you just go with what feels right, that's the only thing you really can do, right?

Now it makes perfect sense to me. I refer to my instincts the way others might refer to their faith, and as far as I'm concerned I'm meant to be missing that piece. We all are. Think about it, why would you enter the world with a complete puzzle?