when Ritsuko times out

First, realize that this article may have some semblances of 19th century and earlier English in it. I read the Bible, man. Figures of speech stuck. I’ve just gotten back from a Easter camp on Christianity – I have to type everything out before I forget anything. This has been one hell of an experience. And when I say a hell, I mean Hell.

The bus takes about 7 hours to go from Oldenburg to Schierke, stopping along Bremen and Gottingen. I went along to find out about the process of conversion in other people, but I found that most people who were going were already Christians who wanted to renew their faith.

Those were two days of hell. Schierke is a beautiful village, it never rained, and there were gurgling streams and rivers all around the youth hostel. Everybody there either had an expensive looking mountain/racing bicycle or an expensive looking racing motorbike. There even were horse carriages. And yet we were not allowed to go out (I sneaked out a couple of times). We had video lectures morning, afternoon, and night. Of course, we had lectures from real lecturers in person, morning, afternoon, and night. The video lecturer kept on saying “God/Lord/Jesus/Christ will (do X thing here that makes the crowd cheer)” and he would always punctuate that with “in the name of Jesus”, which always made the crowd go Amen. In fact, I think some lecturers thrive on this form of acknowledgment.

I remember one saying “And for those who procrastinate, saying that he/she shall believe next year, and perenially perpetuate this little lie, I say that Salvation is not available all the time”. I then said to my friend, who had invited me to come: “Limited offer only! Come one, come all!”

As you can see, I was the only atheist in the whole group. Everybody was a devout Christian, everybody called everybody brother or sister, and only the children were running and screaming restlessly as their parents listened raptly to whoever was in session. As with every lecture I’ve attended, I fell asleep pretty quickly. The hall was stuffy and there was at least 200 people in it, and as soon as I got up and walked out of the hall, my head would quickly become clear again. This was also in smaller lecture groups, for example in the Bible Study, which really wasn’t worth much, because the guy just kept repeating that Jesus was sacrificed to pardon our sins, and never went beyond that. He just paraphrased what was in the Bible and repeated ad infinitum. Once people had figured that I was an atheist, the pastors came like moths around a candle. There was one who pretended that he had graduated from Computer Engineering, but didn’t know a damn thing of what I was talking about (I was wearing an Autocomp/Novell shirt at the time, which advertised Netware’s interconnectivity between IBM PS/2, PC (386/486), Macs, Unix systems and such. Yes, it was an old shirt). Once the topic turned to religion, he stopped looking around like he was looking for somebody, and he started talking about belief and God. Ha ha ha. There was another, whose speech would invariably cause a headache, although of course, he would have you believe that it’s because Satan was wrestling with the Word of God in my head. On my way back to Oldenburg on the bus, I talked with him. It seems flirting was taboo in Christianity, so I told him that for the past 19 years, I’ve never known how to flirt. Once I gained the skill, I found that not knowing how to flirt was like denying myself my masculinity. He grunted, and a few seconds later, asked about something totally generic, you know, the type you ask when you’re trying to mine some small talk out of the person. The conversation started to peter out, but after a few minutes, he would sigh, fidget a bit, and ask me inconsequential questions about myself. I called him out on it: “Why do you force the conversation? If we are naturally interested in each other, the conversation will flow naturally.” He said he didn’t understand. I was pretty frustrated. Here was a blathering idiot, a reliable headache invoker, and here he was playing dumb with me. I wanted to ask him: “Why do you ask these stupid questions? Haven’t I given you enough food for conversation in the subject of flirting? By dodging the subject, you show your insincerity in getting to know me (as did the Computer Engineer), and it shows that you haven’t even thought about what I’ve said. Why are you Christians always incapable of thinking for yourselves, and look ing always to the Bible for what is right, and what is wrong?” But the bus had arrived at my stop, and I went out, anxious to return home. I even waved to that motherfucker. He doesn’t deserve it.

There was one pastor who wasn’t that bad, though. His name was Yusuf, and he used to be a Muslim. The second night had a testimonial session, and there was one testimonial in which another former Muslim had been converted by Yusuf. He sat down with me while the video lecture was going on, and pointed out where we were (I couldn’t figure out what the guy was saying in the video at all, and besides, it’s a fucking video lecture, give me a break. I slept the most soundly during these video lecture sessions), and we argued about this and that. For example, Dinah getting raped by some prince of some inconsequential people, who were later slain by Jacob’s tribe for violating his daughter. Yusuf insisted that it was her fault – she should have taken some security, or just stayed at home meekly. This is disgusting to hear, and I’m not even a feminist. It’s disgusting because such women are disgusting, and I told him so, that shouldn’t it be the prince’s fault? Hey, the Bible even said that he was punished by being slain! it’s gotta have been his fault! He totally missed the point of the story in that one, it’s not even about women being meek and home-staying, but that bad things happen to those who wrong God’s family. It’s pretty obvious. In the end, I thanked him for his sincerity and patience (in that order).

I asked a couple people why they were religious/Christian. Among the people who stood out was a certain Mandy Hochmuth. It’s pretty interesting how we first met. I grudgingly went to the Singles Prayer Session at the insistence of my friend. It turned out to be all about praying to Lord to lead us to our life partner, how we want our first choice to be the right choice, and how we should love each other eternally. Yeah, right. As if matchmaking was the only way to get anybody – and relinquishing control over who you could marry, too. According to Christianity, there is no “dating”. There’s only some form of “engaged”, but even that form is kinda like boyfriend+girlfriend because you can’t have sex. Christians emphasize marrying in order to have sex. Okay, so I’m twisting their words, but eventually that’s what it boils down to. If you want to have sex with that woman (you shouldn’t, it’s impure – hahaha), you should marry her on the spot. Now you guys know me. I’m on sosuave.net, I’ve subscribed to David DeAngelo for a few years, I’m now checking out Stylelife, reading Neil Strauss’s works, working on my inner game, and now this pastor who thinks he’s all that up and tells me I have no control over who I shall love. It was absurd, ridiculous. I will not pray for this kind of bullshit. I stood there and watched as all the handfuckers, male and female alike, started praying fervently with such fervour for their partner to be, that I couldn’t help but smirk a little bit. After all, I was once like that, see where it got me. Into my palm, that’s what. And they’re so desperate. I mean, just look at them, they’re praying so diligently, so many wrinkled brows, so many clasped hands, people kneeling, bending over, all because they’re too lazy/afraid/whatever to go and do the job themselves.

And then I saw her. She was the only white among the congregation. She prayed like a nun – she didn’t bend over or anything, she just slightly bowed her head, stood, clasped her hands around her navel, and mouthed some words. I looked at her, and found that she was attractive. She was, indeed, attractive, even though her skin was not perfect. I decided that I would grant her her wish. After all, I do find her attractive. I shall go up to her, interrupt her prayer, and say “Why do you pray? I’m already here, and oh by the way let me introduce myself. I’m your dream partner” and slowly kiss her hand. You see that in shoujo manga all the time, the guy makes the first move

So I walked over to her side. Then I decided that okay, interrupting her prayer was maybe a little too much. Maybe I should wait until the whole unsightly thing’s over. So I waited, and waited, until everybody started to file out of the room, and she opened her eyes and looked up. I introduced myself, and offered to kiss her hand – at that moment, she pulled it away. I asked her name – she murmured something, Minty, or something along that vein. By god, she was cute, but she was afraid/shy/whatever, girls are always like that when you approach strongly, and so I let her go, and inspected myself in the nearest mirror. Okay, so my lips are chapped, but is that really my fault? I haven’t been able to find a single 1.5L water bottle in all of Schierke. They weren’t chapped when I went on this camp at first!

And that was how I met Mandy. The next day, I went around asking people why they were Christian, and what experience made them religious. The one that stuck out was Mandy’s testimonial, so I reproduce it here. The next day, I said hello to her (with a smile) in the canteen so I could judge her overall impression of me. It seemed like she was receptive to further contact, so later in the day when I spotted her sitting alone, I walked over to her, and asked her why she was Christian.

They were right when they said that women love to talk of themselves. I hadn’t gotten any long spiels from the males I asked so far, and to hear this usually quiet, reserved woman speak so lengthily of anything at all was quite surprising, and I caught myself feeling very happy indeed. She was from East Germany, and so she was once Communist. As such, she had committed quite a few sins (of what sins they were I judged wise not to inquire), and she made comparison with the distances between her fingers. She went to New Zealand for university, and there she found an inspiring pastor (it seems that most conversions involve inspiring pastors), and she said that her life overall has been much improved as a result. I’ve already forgotten why our conversation, or rather, her speech was so long, but here are a few things I remember – looking at her hands, she said she knows that God has created her; how she said that after experiencing Christianity, she has purged everything unclean from her heart, that she had felt jealousy only once – and I replied that it was so rare to find a woman without jealousy; her brown eyes, in the light which filtered in through the windows; her smile, and most of all, her laugh, a light, cheerful stream of bubbles that burst in the air and magnified her beauty through their falling droplets. I had just said that I admire her way of praying, so quiet, reserved, and yet undoubtedly earnest – and she replied that everybody has their own way of praying – to which I replied that I’ve found some people’s praying, while earnest, to be quite frightening indeed. I don’t know why she laughed. Being such a devout Christian, I had thought that she would be offended. I know I’m a good listener, and I’m so glad I took the time to cultivate this skill – for now I remember the colour of her eyes and the sincerity and passion with which she spoke to me of her life. Somewhere along the end of our conversation, I dropped the fact that I was atheist – and she offered to pray for me that I should open my heart to God. She remembered my name, and asked of my surname.

Oh yes.

Part 2 coming later tonight