This is My Body: a horror story

As a kid, I never had a moment where I thought God was listening. The concept seemed flawed straight away, and my little six-year-old brain was ready to poke holes.

I had a hard time with the fact that people seriously believed in some Invisible Old Man in the clouds, presumably bearded, who just spys on people all day and guilts them if they don’t abide by his rules.

If I were God, I’d certainly find something more entertaining to do.

Still, I was mystified by the lengths people would go for this Invisible Old Man. The devotion, the fear, the righteous anger. The strange division between the various subsets of churches who all, apparently, thought they were the only ones really getting it right.

Catholicism especially fascinated me. There were so many rules! Strange clothes! Songs I didn’t know the words to! Every time I had to attend a first communion or a funeral mass, I felt like I was observing the most mysterious ritual.

People go into a cupboard, and confess their secrets to a stranger. People eat stale crackers and call it a blessing. Of course, as an unbaptized child I was a stranger in a foreign land.

Myself, I didn’t pray, I wished on stars. I plucked petals, and broke twigs. I made promises to trees and dirt and called it magic. I just couldn’t comprehend trying to strangle the concept of ‘God’ into a single entity.

I prefer the vast unknowable universe.

It makes me feel insignificant enough.