anyway im sitting in class posting on kdice and i should be sitting in class doing class work. so maybe something a little more well thought out tonight.

Also Monte and Happy you may have 10 years of life on me, but you have no clue what kind of ordeals i have gone through or if i have gone through any at all. It would be foolish of you to blindly assume that i am naive though.

nah youre 100% naive, its obv from your avatar puppy. lol

"I mean doesnt it give you a warm fuzzy feeling to think that the good you do here and now will bring you an unimaginabley great reward?"

yes. it does. but wanting something to be true doesn't make it true. it also gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to think that i will have dinner prepared and ready for me when i get home from work. but the reality is, i live alone.

trust me det, if i could chose to believe or disbelieve, i would believe.

lol monte, westboro baptist church is pretty funny, isn't it? they picketed outside my high school in northern virginia last year (they were kinda pissed that George Mason had a drag queen for homecoming queen and my high school is in the same county, so I guess they decided to stop by on their way).

thrax- I'm not fearful. I'm hopeful.

happy- Confirmation is supposed to be the point in time where each person baptized into the Catholic Church chooses to remain a part of it. I chose my church. I looked at other religions. All through elementary school I was exposed to different cultures and religions and in my religious ed classes we talked about other religions. So yes, I do follow the religion of my parents. but it's just as much mine as theirs. I don't claim that Catholicism is perfect by any means; I don't believe any one religion could be.

Also talking about the bible, I dunno if you've seen "Baby got Bible" but you should. it's p funny if you ask me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTYr3JuueF4

damn I process way too slowly. there were like 118 posts when I started writing that last one.

happy- what prevents you from choosing to believe?

chloe,

the same thing that prevents you from believing in vishnu prevents me from believing in your yahweh.

"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
~Christopher Hitchens

The way you were talking it seemed as if even trying to believe wasn't an option for you, happy. "if i could chose to believe or disbelieve" etc. Nothing prevents me from choosing whether or not to believe in Vishnu; I simply choose not to.

ok wall of text time (this story might end early if my wife gets back early from that post-partum whatever meeting).

happy i think i share some past with you as far as growing up in a church, except mine was presbyterian, not catholic. i was always the allstar kid in the youth group. i could memorize scriptures like a champ, all the parents in the church were always bathing me in compliments. basically i was the teachers pet at the church.

i have an older brother who graduated a year ahead of me. we were together in pretty much everything growing up, including church. but when he graduated and went to a local college, he definitely decided to experiment a lot. he was the more stubborn of the two of us (still is). he came home one weekend and announced to the family that he tried to get drunk (mom gagged at his blunt honesty). then a couple months later he came home and announced that he was no longer a Christian, and couldnt believe it any more.

this all had lasting effects on me, as i had never really believed deeply much about christianity, i had just aced it. i knew that when i went to college i would want to explore just like my brother had, except i wouldnt be so blunt about it with my parents, because my personality is a people-pleaser, and i saw how much it devastated my parents to see my brother flat out reject the way they raised him.

zoom forward to college, i decide to remake myself into a cool person. in high school i was a nerd/dork, hung out with the freaks, the nerds, and the international students (my dad taught at a prep school, so free tuition for me). never had a girlfriend, and i was going to change that. so i tried unsuccessfully to remake myself into someone cool. totally didnt work at all. in the end, after a couple months, the only people who would hang out with me were the computer nerds and the christian fellowship kids.

when i got to college i was superexcited about sundays tho. cus for the first time in 18 years, i could sleep in. holy shit that was awesome. i only kept going to the friday night christian fellowship because they didnt reject me as being a shallow freshman which i was... and because there were a lot of hot freshman women, any number of whom i was totally interested in. so i kept going to fellowship just for the women basically.

first time i went back to church was when my best friend (a chinese dude) invited me to his church, which was a chinese church in town. i was like, heh, ok sure. with the heir of authority, like, ill show these people how to be a christian, since i knew it all, and had aced christianity in high school. but when i got to the church, it had a profound effect on me: instead of being so focused on biblical knowledge, they were more focused on being a family. all the people my generation called the older generation uncle this and auntie that. and all the college age kids still went to the same youth group that the middle school kids went to, and they all cared for each other. it blew me away. and then some of these middle school kids came back from some area retreat, and they were crying when they were sharing about what they experienced/learned. i was like, wtf, this is totally foreign to me. never seen a kid so young... hell never seen anyone of any age be so emotional over a christian experience. so i was intrigued, and switched from the cocky white dude to the humble admirer, and kept going to that church. still do, actually.

zoom to sophomore year, and i had for the first time been honestly trying to be in a relationship with this God, instead of just knowing everything about him. was very awkward, trying to sit in silence and relax and try to listen for a voice, etc.... but i was trying nonetheless.

went to an area conference for baptists through one of the school fellowships and at the end of the 3 days, they played their last worship set (this is sorta common in college fellowship area conferences, btw), and they made a call for anyone in the room who felt called by God to come up front and their college minister would pray for them. it was surreal, because ive never been a mushymushy type person, and the band that was playing was so extremely lame, with mullets and acoustic guitars and slowass music. but i felt a burning sensation in the back of my neck. weird weird. so i thought i would go up front. but then i realized that i hated my college minister (i wont go into the reasons why, heh). so i said, fuck this, im not going up there.

so my best friend let me drive his car back to richmond (from lynchburg). it was a 92 celica gt, fun to drive. he fell asleep. i was driving along i64 in the middle of an amazing autumn with kickass scenery, listening to the original jars of clay cd, and really getting into the lyrics, which i had never paid attention to before... and then everything got crazzzzy.

the highway disappeared. and then i was given three visions. (holy hell, this story just got weird, but i swear i have never done any drugs in my life).

first vision:
i was shown a glimpse of the earth covered in water (think noahs time). all water everywhere. and God explained to me that i knew EVERYTHING about this water, and how to get from one place to another in the best way, etc, etc. i was master of the gps, basically. i knew it all. and he was like, in the same way, you know all about me, you know tons of scriptures, tons of 'right answers', etc.... BUT you do know know me, only *about me. and knowing your way around the surface doesnt get you anywhere when it comes to knowing me.

vision 2:
you know those plastic hollow balls that are at chucky cheeses ball pits? i saw one of those now floating on the surface of the water. and i realized that that ball was me. and in order to know God, i would have to go underwater under the surface that i was all too familiar with. so i went down, but couldnt make it far until the buoyancy popped me back up. so i tried harder, and made it a few feet farther down. same thing, buoyancy back to the surface. i kept trying and trying, and got a little further. then God said something like, i understand and appreciate that you are trying to know me. now, i will show you how to know me. then he started bringing the ball deeper and deeper. way past where i could get to. and then i realized there was a certain amount of pain involved. the pressure of going deeper and deeper, but having that hollow pocket of air still inside of me, that demanded physically to go back to the surface.

i wanted to go back to the surface, because the pain involved was getting worse and worse. and then when i felt i couldnt bear any more, POP, the ball cracked, and WHOOSH, the water all rushed inside. and, then.. well, then i was free! no longer was there this huge force pushing back up. it was awesome, i could explore up, down, left, right. and it was just awesome.

so basic idea of that vision was that for me to know God, it was up to Him to reveal himself to me... and that there was a painful reality that he had to break me to get the air out, so that i could truly experience him.

3rd vision:
my two main homes were chattanooga and richmond. pretty much everyone i knew in the world lived in those two places. he showed me, real quick and non-gory like, both of those cities, BOOM, blown up in a holocaust, and then they didnt exist any more. (again, nothing gory). then i saw a vision of myself sitting in a stereotypical african serengeti setting, on a boulder in the middle of a huge plain, with a breeze blowing past me, and a bible open on the rock next to me. and then i heard a voice say 'i am all you need.' and then the biggest almost tangible feeling of peace came over me, and i knew everything was ok.

the meaning of this one for me is a personal thing. growing up the people pleaser i always cared intensely what others thought of me (think about how i tried to remake myself as a cool person). and i always wanted to be included in groups. but he basically told me in a gentle and commanding way, that i no longer needed to rely on being in a group, that i no longer needed to rely on listening to a pastor, or watching my friends experience God or whatever, that now i could be completely isolated from everyone, and be completely content. because i was with Him, and that was enough.

and then i64 popped back into view, and i was HOLY GOOD GRIEF WTF, and looked over at my buddy like oh shit i coulda just totalled your car!... but he was still asleep. so i sat and pondered everything till we got back on campus. then i wrote a massively tl;dr email to a bunch of people joyfully telling them what happened.

most of them thought i was off my rocker weird. which i completely understand, its a wacky story. but its personal for me. and thats the main reason i believe in the God/Jesus stuff.

Monte, I really enjoy our conversations and I think of you as an internet friend. For that reason I'm not going to respond to your post (for fear of making condescending comments and being "rough" with my interpretation of your "vision"). But thanks for sharing that insight into your psyche and your beliefs. It takes a certain person to reveal things that are personal about themself. I applaud you for it. I'm far too jaded in my views to comment, or even understand(psychologically) your story.

alt fail...........this is Thrax if you didn't know