Wednesday 25 September 2013

#44 - It's My Life



Today’s words: Patristic, Ensure, Perfect, Retrieve

Word count: 282

Completion time: 32 minutes

Summary: Choose what to do with your life, not what people tell you

I was the same age as the girl from this story when I was ‘allowed’ to stop attending church by my mother, so I guess it stems from my childhood.

Don't assume that I think religion is stupid or pointless, this is a fictional poem.

~

That day that she came back from church on the Sabbath

She put her scripture bag filled with patristic theology on the floor

And told me that she wanted to create her own religion

She told me she wanted to ensure that ‘perfect’ wasn’t something to be achieved

It was something that didn’t exist

She wanted to embrace ‘imperfection’ and mistakes that can be put right

She looked me dead in the eyes like she wanted to kill a man and said:

“Isn’t it possible to be good without fear of eternal damnation from Satan?”

I anticipated that it was going to be a long one, so I sat down.

“Can it be me who decides what’s good and what isn’t for myself?

I don’t want to follow something that tells me what’s right, I want to make my own right.

I want to say that it’s okay for people to do as they like as long as it’s what they believe,

What they cherish and stand by no matter who says they can’t.

If they do good, their reward will be self-love, not a heaven that may or may not exist.

If they do bad, their punishment will be a sense of failure and disappointment.

Nothing is worse than feeling that you’ve let someone down, and that includes yourself.

I don’t need to be told that I’m going to a place that might not be real just because of the way that I want to live my life.”

She went to retrieve her bag from the floor and when she picked it up, she added:

“My life is no-one else’s, so I’ll do with it what I want.”

She was eleven-years-old.

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