The Right to Think

Have you ever been curious about where our beliefs come from - really come from? I have dissected the question over the years - always arriving at the same crystal conclusion - most of our beliefs are inheritances. They are passed from one generation to the next, like my Grandfather's uniquely tattooed twenty-five pound Bible - of the giant print variety, or in my case, his still functioning Sears & Roebuck 12 gauge shotgun. That old gun lives in my personal closet among other multifarious relics from the past, whose ghostly remains are now precious to me. I love that worn-out chunk of southern hardwood and rusting metal. Handling it often brings tears to my eyes, as I travel the years, in an instant, to the days when Grandpa would invite me to plod along behind him, through grasses, towering over my head, on the occasional rabbit hunt. These memories are filed away, with many like them, as splotchy old movie clips of more innocent years - cherished more now than then.

Much like Grandpa's shotgun, I also remember his faith. I have no desire to forget. If I listen closely, I can faintly hear an earnest baritone crying out to the God of his inheritance. Grandpa could vibrate the whole house in a strangely gentle way, as he pled with the almighty for protection of each family member - by name - then always, the President of the United States. I distinctly remember kneeling across the room from him - hair standing on the back of my neck and arms, in wonderment of his absolute relation with God. It often felt like Grandpa was God! I loved him then, and will cherish his memory for the rest of my life. From what I've learned of him over time, he was a stern conservative man, tamed finally by old-age and tenderness of heart. I got the better of his life it seems.

Today I write, from a liberated mind, these recollections of life as a youngster growing up inside the confines of a microcosmic system of religious belief - alien to much of the greater civilization that lay beyond my reach. It became my inheritance, and in the years that followed, I would digest it all, grow into its fullest capacity, and ultimately reject it through bitter tears. I have long espoused the notion that children have rights, which are just as valid as those of their parents - in some cases more so. Still today I rage against the scars of my heart - left there by the loss of all I knew, years of fear and the lonely journey into an even more frightful unknown, by the sweaty dreams who stole into my bed on many lonely nights, and the oft felt throb of an amputated soul. Christianity was my inheritance - not my choice.

I am human, as are you -

as are your children 

and their children too. 

Please don't rob them 

of their right to choose 

what they will think -

what they will do.

Along this life's cheery path,

we'll all meet God -

bask in his love

and not his wrath.

Think Before You Believe,

Pappy