For those of you who don't know, I was home-schooled until the middle of grade eight. Yes. That might explain some things. I remember some key obervances I made when I started there. Discovering that girls wore panties made out of string that stretched higher than the top of their pants (I almost told one girl about it until I realized she was doing it on purpose), and that making friends isn't very easy, even when it's a small school. Maybe even especially because it's a small school (although one girl invited me for a sleepover within the first month, so I couldn't have been doing that bad). I ran into a boy I thought was cute and was really embarrassed. Another time I couldn't pronounce the word debt in front of another boy I liked, who I conned into giving me a ride home in his new Chevy, even though we didn't say anything the entire ride home (I didn't ask again).

But that boy, the one I ran into so hard that I almost fell on my bum, him like a rock (when I thought back on that I decided it was kind of sexy), staring at me ("Watch it," he said), I remember him in this weird day when I was in a class period with people my sister's age. Two years older. That's the grade he was in. I remember the teacher asking us to name all the different aspects such as physical, mental, emotional. There was one that he was fishing for. I knew it. I was too shy to say it. Spiritual, he said. That boy. He was right. I was right.

Spiritual. When you grow up in a church-going family, or at least my church-going family, you have pressure on you. Pressure to hold up your Christian values (don't swear, preach the good word, and all that). If you've read any of the Bible, you probably noticed that a lot of the teachings are about not fitting in. And fitting in is important to a person in grade eight, previously home-schooled or not. In my grade nine year, I got three new pairs of tight pants that I didn't have before. And I saved up for some of those panties (mom said she wouldn't buy them for me). It paid off. I got more attention that year that I did any other year at school (in grade 10 I got back from Bible camp and was in touch with what "really matters," abandoning makeup and wearing jeans two sizes too big. This may have had something to do with it. Or the fact that I didn't say anything to anyone but my best friend).

Spiritual. People hate that word. Or maybe it's just religion. It makes us uncomfortable. Angry, even. One person described prayer as talking to yourself to make yourself feel better. Praying to yourself. "Not that being in touch with yourself is bad," he said.

I've had moments where I've stood so firmly to my beliefs that I have been the very image of the hard-head self-righteous fanatic we all despise. Not in the past five years, I haven't, but before that, sure. Spitting out words like eschatology, discussing what exactly the function of baptism is. I've had a free past five years. Years I've spent believing in, yes, the One True God, despite criticisms, and yes, most Sundays are spent in an office chair staring forward (though I never get in on that whole chant business. Somehow that's different than collective singing). But the years I spent scanning textbooks instead of scriptures, having the pleasure of puking from the poison labeled alcohol, as well as questioning and condoning the members that surround me as hypocritical self-serving people who have only managed to ruin cultures in the name of God and put a bad name for the rest of us, were good years. Years I would not replace.

And now. I'm reading a book that describes a heaven as not some bodiless bliss, but as a combination of heaven and earth combined, into a physical renewed planet. That says people who label themselves as believers are spouting a lot of wrong things, things that aren't taught, concepts that were adopted from people like Plato.

You can call me stupid for believing it. A breath of fresh air. I feel like high-fiving the author. Finally, someone writing things I agree with, things I haven't thought of before, things that go against aimless traditions. Things that make sense. Give purpose.

My only problem now is that I don't like other people (the whole loving others is a pretty big theme in the good old book). You all annoy me. Humans and their waste and stupidity. Endless. Endless unless there is some reason to actually be different (different as in, actually loving people, and trying to live for the betterment of the planet, not "not swearing" or wearing pants two sizes too big). Even if it seems stupid to believe, to live only for myself is worse, believe me. To live only for my family is useless. Selfish.

All I'm saying is, just like that teacher said, spirituality is a part of us, a part that we neglect. A part of us that discerns right from wrong. That is easily calloused. Maybe right and wrong don't matter to you, but every time I read the news I know it matters to me.