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.
