Folded, covered arms across my chest. I huddle in a slight shiver as we cross the road. Just a two-hour service. Two hours where I have to pretend to listen with attentive ears and a graceful smile, while my atheist mind can wonder. I can ponder over how to write my review of The Help, now that I'm finished with it.
Wrinkly hands and cheeks regularly pass my own in a pre-service gathering, all of which I meet with obligation and feigned attentiveness. Politeness, if you will. Words pass over me in the form of monotonous voices, words of praise, words that speak of a lifetime of dedication, for something that does not even exist. It makes me want to scream. The minutes pass by in a fumble of fleeting eyes and hands that clumsily search for the right page of the hymn book, a dormant brain that improvises with the organists playing and melismatic words that I am ill-informed about.
A lady in clerical robes walks towards a book sermons and begins what I think was a half-hour session of preaching. From what I actually took in it appeared that she was talking about the gospel; how it is not eternal damnation that we should be focusing on, but the do-gooding that will guarantee us a place in heaven (no idea why I use the first person plural here). But most importantly, she talked of the need to convince others to become christians such as themselves. This was the point where I was truly screaming "bullshit" in my own head. I wonder if the lady ever considered that a non-believer sat amongst her congregation, doing whatever the mental equivalent is of shaking one's head as she spoke. I couldn't bear to look her in the eye, so instead I stared meekly at the bottom of the pew in front of me. A tiny shred of sallow paper lay dusty on the wooden floor, and I thought to myself, "I am going to learn so much more about the world, so much more truth in that single piece of paper that lies unacknowledged on the floor than the lady I am listening to. Unlike the lady, the paper is not tainted by the ink of man-made doctrine and dogma. Why should I listen to someone who has assumed the truth in what she heard as a girl from other ladies who have believed in the same thing since they were girls because they were taught so? Why should I, when before me stand millions of atoms that show so much more integrity and intelligence in order and form than we can ever assimilate with our own minds? When I see rows of folded hands that are so clearly the product of eons of evolution, the greatest design of all? When invisible - proven - waves of light travel millions of miles from the sun and adorn the dark rings of wooden floorboards and cast shadows from the legs of chairs? All of these have been proven to us- an absolute explanation of what is there and where it comes from is there for all of us to see and understand - and yet we still listen to the lady at the altar who tells us that it all came about six days of intelligent design by a higher power of mercy that our world is so void of.
