The Autistic Christian

My dad was agnostic and my mother nominally atheist, but the nuns at the convent had been abusive. 

I approached the local vicar for confirmation at 15. To be honest, most of my religiosity was fuelled by a fear of death. Alas, there were no thunderclap of revelation at confirmation. 

Just before 18 I had a sudden mental health crisis, after reading about the atrocities that the old testament Yahweh really got up to. I felt a massive terror that an evil and insane God had set humanity up so that we were all doomed to fail his unfair tests anyway. The RI teacher went beyond the call of duty to keep me sane! And I didn't appreciate how difficult it must have been for her, skirting round the big question of heresy.

I couldn't go back after that, but unfortunately had less-than happy run-in with other systems of belief.. I had no idea how much of a sense of power certain kinds of people can derive from messing with your head, or playing on certain kinds of fear.

At 15 I had a very religious cousin, who was also partly responsible for the confirmation. She once said that everyone had a church that was right for them I thought she meant a small gothic building somewhere, in Hungarian at least there is a separate word for the community rather than a building! Well, over the Covid time, one such community in California opened its doors, or rather Zoom to Zoomers. That's been an interesting step forward. 

My dad was agnostic and my mother nominally atheist, but the nuns at the convent had been abusive. 

I approached the local vicar for confirmation at 15. To be honest, most of my religiosity was fuelled by a fear of death. Alas, there were no thunderclap of revelation at confirmation. 

Just before 18 I had a sudden mental health crisis, after reading about the atrocities that the old testament Yahweh really got up to. I felt a massive terror that an evil and insane God had set humanity up so that we were all doomed to fail his unfair tests anyway. The RI teacher went beyond the call of duty to keep me sane! And I didn't appreciate how difficult it must have been for her, skirting round the big question of heresy.

I couldn't go back after that, but unfortunately had less-than happy run-in with other systems of belief.. I had no idea how much of a sense of power certain kinds of people can derive from messing with your head, or playing on certain kinds of fear.

At 15 I had a very religious cousin, who was also partly responsible for the confirmation. She once said that everyone had a church that was right for them I thought she meant a small gothic building somewhere, in Hungarian at least there is a separate word for the community rather than a building! Well, over the Covid time, one such community in California opened its doors, or rather Zoom to Zoomers. That's been an interesting step forward. 

When my local parish in Rural Ireland had the first of the webcam Masses during lockdown, I jumped at the chance because the Irish Covid travel restrictions were much tougher and lasted for far longer than here in the U.K. - the Gardai  (police) were stopping people from going outside of thier 5k and from going to Mass, which was very hard on the elderly Irish people in Rural Ireland, whose Catholic faith means everything to them, but the sight of the priest in an empty church saying Mass was heartbreaking