I am not a particularly reverent individual as you may have guessed by now, but on occassion I find myself longing for the religious convictions of my childhood. I miss the sense that somehow the universe was ultimately a just and loving place. I miss heaven and angels and the Virgin Mary's benevolent gaze. I miss unconditional love.

But once the shiny celluloid surface has been pealed back, I realize that what I miss is the illusion of safety, the belief that faith could protect me from the evil within me. But evil lay among the faithful.  As long as I believed, I could pretend that evil was in those dark places in myself, not in the intentions of those who weilded power over me. I had to believe that my gods were benevolent.

The price of faith was my memories and myself. Yet, there are times during which I am afraid that I would be willing to pay it. I do not want to sell my birthright for a mass of pottage, but sometimes my birthright seems too much to bear.