I hopped the rail and sat against the dirt wall below the highway. The face of a mountain stared at me from across a small valley. It was high and snow-capped. I took off my sweatshirt and faced it. The sun hit my face and ran through it like chemicals. Down in the valley a thin stream ran beneath the tall trees and loose rocks, which tumbled down the sides like tears. I sat there and stared at all of it. My face and arms were hot with blood. I was back with life. Birds would land and take off again from the limbs down there. I sunk my hand into the warm dirt and let it fall through my fingers. I missed the road, the dangerousness of no routine. I sat back and thought about everything. I wondered what Helena was doing, and if I still crossed her mind. I wondered if my mother could see me from where she was, and I wondered what she thought of me. I wondered if there were mountains in Heaven. I knew there had to be a Heaven because she was dead and I couldn’t stand the thought of her rotting in a coffin with nothing else for her. I wanted a Heaven to exist for her. For me it didn’t matter. I believed in no afterlife, and I believed that man may never know how the first form of life began, but that was where the beauty of life came from, from that mystery. The biblical God to me was a joke, the words were a joke, but I considered God to be everything that I knew nothing about, a feeling, the source of love I felt concerning good and evil. To have told her that God to me was another word for the unknown would have broken her heart, so I watched the bright leaves and let them rest onto the idea of her up high, to shine beneath her soul. I sat there and remembered her, then my thoughts trailed back to the warm air, and how much time I’d spent away from it. A cloud passed and blocked the sun. I stood up and put my sweatshirt on.

We worshipped every Sunday, with Mom and Dad, we were so good. We knew our stories (myths?), our verses and our fables. We were young, we were bright. We were full of hope.

How is it that the church turned you into an atheist and me into a cynic?

We heard whispers, we were glared upon. We didn't know there was a dress code in God's house. We didn't know there was a guest list in God's house. We learned quickly.

We grew older and wiser, our innocence vanished and you said to me, "No God I've heard of would allow this hell on Earth," your voice chilly and angry. I finished my drink, I laid my head down to sleep knowing you were right.

I've been alone ever since.

I was baptised a Roman Catholic back in 1952, a time when televisions were tiny black and white things that people crowded around. Trams ferried shoppers to and fro, and streets were full of kids playing postman's knock. Teddy boys stood around on street corners with their hair greased slick, and Elvis Presley blared out from radios in every house.

I went to Church every Sunday, just the same as everybody did, and we wore our best clothes too and bowed our heads as Priests filled us with the fear of God. Every family had to be seen to attend Sunday Services, and morality was held in high esteem, at least outwardly.

Eventually, as I grew into my long trousers, I was volunteered to serve the Church as an Altar Boy, a position which meant I attended Church every morning at 7.00 prompt for morning service, and I felt proud to be so associated as the reflected esteem upon my Mother seemed to please her.

I eventually moved to higher duties as I was taught to read music and was given the honour of moving from the High Altar to the Organist position, were I mastered the fearsome multi keyboard instrument and played to accompany the choristers at weddings, funerals and High Mass.

I believed in God and His Works as fervently as anyone, then I enlisted to the Infantry, and served for fifteen years, during which I was witness to much inhumanity.

After that my faith dissipated along with my skills as a organist.

Now, in this space age world I look about at empty churches, Paedophile Priests, mistrust and violence that pervades our societies, I see beheadings paraded on social media for the sick amusement of the hidden few and I stand before a mirror and look upon the wreckage of our lives and our empty streets and I weep for the days of old.

My experience with religious beliefs I can relate to flatulence:

While you can understand and tolerate your own others can often be offended. It can make you warm and relieve pressure, when needed, but when you force others to share your experience they may turn their nose up at you. Everyone has to consider it constantly, in one form or another, and its best to let it out then keep it in. Just keep it a private and personal matter.

"Religions are like farts. Yours is good, but everyone else's stinks." ~Picket Fences

I don’t have a personal relationship with God.

I’ve seen Him weaving in and out of the pews of so many churches, in stained glass, incense on a midnight mass, felt what He might be like in all of my favorite things; a good book, nature, large bodies of water, the sky after rain, but I have never found Him in me.

That’s the whole point, too, isn’t it —the idea of faith is that you are supposed to trust, unbridled, in all that He is —let him lift you up from the trough of your sorrows so that you may be fulfilled with… however they said it; all of the things I’ve heard tumble out of the mouths of tired priests, trite and repetitive, their Sunday flock disenchanted with their weekly habit. A bold few raise their hands in prayer, enraptured for the moment, and I stare with fascination at their devotion.

But I do not believe.

It’s merely a humble speculation, a dormant and wistful concept that brews in the back of my chest. Sometimes I think it may be one of the most beautiful stories humans have ever told, but the narrow-minded thought that we could ever capture something so perfect and all-knowing into one book is entirely beyond me.

Perhaps a god is out there somewhere, in an indescribable form —tucked within the heavens, the cosmos, but with no plan. Just keen, watchful eyes.

In 2010 there was an encounter that shook my faith until this day. My religion is clearly misguided even though I do believe in a higher power.

My mother passed away when I was 13. It’s been nearly 5 years since that time and I still feel that my time with her was stripped away from me too soon. There could have been time, or there should have been more time. I selfishly wished that God would have never taken the one thing away that meant so much to me.

I wanted someone--anyone-- to save me.

Life wasn’t going my way; my immediate family were being idiots from the very start and blatantly left me to sit there and take the reigns for my mother. I was 13. Why was I deciding when she died, and how it would happen? Why didn’t my brother who is 8 years older than me decide?

Why didn’t someone save me?

I was pissed. Pissed beyond compare. I felt alone, isolated, abandoned by the one person who was supposed to be there for me the most and He was not is what I felt. He abandoned me. He left me to rot in an icy Hell that I didn’t know how to get out of. God, why? Is the question I wanted to ask; but remembering the strong faith of my mother she always told me to never question Him. But it never occurred to me the number of questions left unanswered in the wake of this life-shattering event.

Someone should have saved me.

My immediate family still isn’t here. Am I to blame? Is it because I was too angry, too livid from my mother’s passing for them to up and run away from me? Was I not good enough for the people who claim to be my own blood? Why weren’t they here with me? And why aren’t they here still?

Why couldn’t I be saved?

Until this very day my life has spiraled. I’ve almost lost my damn marbles a couple times. Trying to figure out this game we call life. Trying to figure out my purpose and what my Savior really make me for. I’m still wondering when I can be saved.

None of it worked for me. I first tried buddhism, it was depressing. I tried Christianity, every prayer made things worse. I've tried witchery, the spells work, but the point of life is unanswered. I've tried many religions, they all look so colorful, but when given the spotlight; they tend to fail.

I've given up. I don't follow common religion. I follow nothing, living my life of theories. My most referred to theory, I mostly believe when dead, we are simply an unoperating organism experiencing nothingness.

"I think it’s better to have ideas. You can change an idea, changing a belief is trickier. Life should be malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can’t generate. Life becomes stagnant."

– Chris Rock (as Rufus in the movie Dogma)

Religion is a good idea but like most things it is taken way out of context. If you look at all religions they have the same core values, and if you follow these core values you typically are a good person. You don't commit murder, you don't steal things... ect. ect. ect.

As a person that was raise with influences from every religion I do believe that not one religion has it completely right, and they do make mistakes, why? People, plain and simple. As a living inhabitant of this planet we make mistakes, and since religion is run and created by us there is a lot of room for error. The Catholic Church's do nothing stance during WWII when Nazi Germany was persecuting the Jewish People or the Spanish Inquisitions. Even more recent times the Muslim Jihads that are the cause of the terrorist attacks of today. History will always repeat itself when religion is involved.

Which brings me to what I believe, which is a different but the same fundamental values that you would find in all major religions. I do believe that there is a higher power, I do not believe that we have to go to church to accept that Being into our lives. I do think that if you are a good person it will reflect good throughout your life. And the "Golden Rule" does ring true, treat people how you want to be treated, also known as Karma in the Buddhists eyes.

Religions have good ideas that people take and run with, there will always be war and violence associated with religion because people cannot accept fundamental differences when they are so heavily involved in their beliefs. Ignorance, in this kind of issue is one that seems to have heavy influence in today's society which is a complete shame to the love and tolerance religion is supposed to teach.

I was raised to be a follower, a believer, but maybe it was my fucked up experiences that kept me from trusting that.

Isn't it a little sick to be grateful?

I was lead to believe that I would be entrusted a holy conscious, a little spirit cricket to guide my decisions with me.

And I wanted it so badly.

I guess I didn't really know how it was supposed to work.

After I got dunked people always asked me how it felt.

How was I supposed to be different. I'd gone swimming a million times. Maybe I was really a mermaid. (You can't baptize a mermaid. I'm sure of it.) I asked my shoulder angel to tell me which way to go home. I didn't want a tree to fall on me or to run into the wrong people. I asked that little voice if I should stay at the park before I went home. No answer? That must mean yes!

I became scared. I was scared of everything it seemed. Easily frightened. The trees were so tall and intimidating. If I ran or rode my bike faster, they couldn't fall on me. There were always teenagers in the park I had to walk through, what if they were going to be mean? How would I know... I'd never gotten a response from the helper I was given from the water when I was 8.

Maybe I'm not like everyone else. Maybe I don't deserve one.

As I grew older and learned more about the gospel, I learned that I should be modest. I followed. It wasn't like my parents were going to buy me anything 'inappropriate' anyway. I had to learn to hide my body. Someone might see it and think I was showing it off. Like he said once, "Girls shouldn't show anything they don't want a guy to touch." I learned t hide really well. Never shorts, even. Only skirts and dresses when I had to for church. I only have the freckles I do because I was a mer-child in the summer time. Almost none on my legs, still.

It was a fight. Everything apart from the supposed strong moral compass I'd learned, I had to unlearn to be comfortable with who I really am, and who I wanted to be. Finding the world out as I started to grow into myself was a harsh and exciting and terrifying experience. Didn't listen to rock until middle school, didn't even get comfortable in tank tops until after high school. Working on accepting my body with all the brainwash of modesty being attractive and anything else being wrong, it was killer.

And as I finally reached my rebellion peak, (yeah, that's right: No church, no before-school seminary, no mid-weekly church activities, and hiking off into the wilderness on my own at church camp) Prop8 came to the voting booths. The church I was raised in donated, openly supported, and preached out against marriage equality.

Last straw.

I didn't go to church after that except for major holidays to respect my parents.

But what did that church do for me?

As a child, It kept me fed, It kept my family together, even if a monster was in it, It kept a roof over our heads, It helped me learn to make friends. And it provided a shortboard to hijack and decorate. And pokemon blankets I found in a storage room. And lots of good rooms for hiding and tag games. And even still, a group of people that will, to this day, always invite me back in, with this crazy hair and these big-ass holes in my ears. And chide me.

I believe that we should make the difference for each other, not for a placement in a space that may never exist. I admire the efforts that religion makes, but it's so much better if we choose it for ourselves because it's the fair, just and caring thing to do. So if someone asks me if I believe in a higher power, my answer is: Who cares. I'm going to make this the best damned world I can, because people don't always hear the word of God, but they will hear someone they trust to talk to.