Credo in unum Deum

... the Father Almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirt,
born of the Virgin Mary ...

I believe it all, folks. I bought the bridge. I took the bait: hook, line, and sinker. I'm a cradle Catholic who hasn't gone sour, no, I've drunk the Kool Aide and said, 'yummy, please, sir, may I have more?' clunk!

'Why?' you ask incredulously. You know I'm smart, so why would I so docilely drink the Kool Aide?

Okay.

So.

This post isn't going to do anybody any good. Not you, and not me. In fact, you can use this in court to invalidate any testimony I give. If I were to see somebody murder somebody, everything I say to convict the killer would be thrown out, simply by citing this post.

Yup, I'm certifiable, as you shall see.

AND, on top of that, you won't get anything out of it. At all.

So, why am I writing my own doom?

'cause you asked. 'cause I love you. And I know that it's pointless. And I know you'll say, 'well, that was random,' and walk away, shaking your head at silly little `phfina, not convinced of anything, so I failed in my evangelization, and that's another strike against me, so this post will also reserve a special place in hell for me, 'cause I failed to move your heart where I could have been a better person and done better but no, I'm just me, speaking what I see, as always, and what does it do, nothing, and you say, ...

well, anyway.

I believe in God.

You do, too. Or you should. And I can give you all the reasons in the world. There are a lot of them. Especially in today's world, so filled with despair, that whole countries have given up and do drugs, so that creates a whole market place where basically Latin America is being destroyed from within by drug production.

Drugs not your thing? Well, then, there's sex, right? So now you have the Old World creating a new tourism, and look what it's doing to people. "Oh, I'll go have sex with this person" who's not a person any more, but a 'flesh light' that you dump your despair on and it not only affects her (or him) but it affects all the people around you who destroy this person or who allow this destruction to go on.

And why? It's just a rephrase of 'my heart is restless until it rests in Thee.' And since there's no more God, no more Thee, for ... well, anyone, right? Who really believes in God, hook, line and sinker, except us gullible ones, us insane ones, us radical terrorists or whatever? And look at all the damage we've done, us God-believers, so let's let rationality rule, just like Stalin, 'cause we can do better when God is taken out of Humanism.

... 60 million deaths later ...

And, oh, I'm one to speak (God, am I on a tear here!), `phfina, 'restlessness, it art thou!'

Well, yeah. Pick up a stone, and accuse me of a sin, including sadness, and despair, and hopelessness, and infidelity, meaning everything there, like not keeping my word, like I'm not supposed to have been drinking that Scotch, eh, `phfina, and why were you?

So, yeah, cast your stone, and say, smugly: 'Aha, aha! She believes in God, but look at her, therefor there is no God.'

That all works up until the last part. And you know it, 'cause as an atheist you have to be smart, and brave, and you have to be unflinching in your gaze, except where you're so fvcking blind.

Then there's the Augustine wager. There's everything to lose not believing God, and everything to gain to believe in Him.

Then there's the Aquinas proof, that no atheist I've debated with has been able to refute.

Yeah, there's PhD's in sbux, physicists even, and do you think I fear their intellect? HA! I ate my professors for breakfast! 'What She Said' may or may not have been based on actual experience (well, actually, the little exchange between Bella and her prof happened in another story, but anyway).

So I could get all intellectual on you and prove to you God exists, and anyway, the alternative is despair and we are reaping those fruits around the world this very moment, and the cost to ... our children, this despair ... you want your children to pay the price of following Ayn Rand and Objectivism? ... or you despair and won't even have children because this world has gone to sh!t, so you'd rather swim in the cesspool and die alone then do this very simple, complete, thing, and believe, and hope.

Don't you dare look at me, please. I'm getting to my confession, okay?

But God, well, I suppose you can go the intellectual route — many have — but I think, from my experience, it boils down to your choice. You can choose just to give up whatever you're holding onto and do an honest inquiry, not a fake inquiry, but an honest inquiry, and go from what is there to what that means. 'There is no God, only my choices. And I choose to live my life my way.' Why? 'Because I choose that.' Why? 'Because it's the best for me in the world.' What's best? What makes something better or worse?

Hm. 'Good' is an old English word derived from the root word ... wait for it: 'God.' There is no 'best' without God. Try it and see.

Or hold onto your hate and fear, and refuse to follow the line of inquiry, and live and die knowing ... what? That you're right?

If there is a right, then there is a wrong. Uh, oh! Right and wrong ... hm. (Follow the inquiry.)

Like I say, it's a matter of Faith, so what I say does nothing, and adds nothing. It only makes me a big walking target for both sides: '`phfina, you so screwed it up, the argument, and you pissed them off! Double strike against you, biatch!'

To summarize so far: believe in God. There are solid arguments for the case, and believing, not despairing, is a pragmatic good on the world, in countries, for people and families. (You want your daughter or son, niece or nephew, to be a sex slave or drug addict?)

All the above side-steps the real question.

That is, to me.

'Why do you believe in God, `phfina?'

Being who I am, is the subtext, right?

I'm a smart girl, right? I see things. Right? And I make choices.

Right?

And those choices I make ...

... yet I still choose to believe in God.

Why?

All of the above. And I've done some experimentation, you know.

(Oh, really! Shocking!)

Thanks for that, Ms. Muse.

So, you may see me as a gullible, naïve little thing, and, yes, I am, but I've seen some alternatives.

And I've seen some things.

And believing in God just makes sense. Really. It does.

And ...

My confession

So. Here it is.

Okay, just get it over with.

So, I was like, ... 12? And we lived a block from church, so I would walk to daily Mass before I walked to school, see? And so one morning I was walking along to Mass and ...

Well, remember Alice's vision in Christmas Surprises? How the whole world tilted on its side?

So, yeah.

And then ... I wasn't anywhere anymore.

God, I'm crying.

And then. I saw Mary, and she was like, bigger than the whole world, bigger than the whole universe. And I was nothing. I wasn't even an ant that she didn't notice that she crushed under her foot, because an ant would be too big to the absolute nothing that I was.

And then she turned her gaze to me.

And I disintegrated.

And ...

And that was it.

And I was looking up, and there were a crowd of adults around me, and I realized I was on the sidewalk, and they were asking me if I was okay.

And I ran. I ran to school. I got there early.

And I tried to pretend everything was okay. That I was okay.

But.

But I couldn't hold it together. Not for long. I kept waiting for Mary to show up again, and what would happen, and I didn't know.

And one day, the teacher asked a question. And I knew I knew the answer to it ... I had studied all night, just trying, just trying to be a good girl and get good grades, and maybe daddy would love me and come back if I were a good girl and didn't have any bad thoughts and did well in school.

And I couldn't speak. And I couldn't breathe.

So I started screaming.

And I saw them, the EMTs, come, and they took me, that is the body screaming on the floor of the evacuated school room, I saw them take me away.

And I spent a long, long time in the hospital, 'getting better.'

And there were psychologists, when there weren't psychiatrists, and panels.

And one time they asked me, 'Do you hear voices in your head?' and they looked and waited, patiently.

And well, Mary actually didn't say anything to me, and ... but I did hear a voice then, and it was my voice, eh, Ms. Muse, and she said, 'be very, very careful.'

So, I said, firmly, with conviction, 'no,' as if that were the most obvious thing in the world.

Besides, Mary wasn't a voice in my head, she was outside my head. She was outside the universe.

Rosalie isn't a voice in my head, she just visits me in my bed, sometimes.

I don't hear voices in my head.

Do I have to go to confession now?

So, anyway, six months later, I was back in school, and I was treated...

Oh, I was treated like ...

I was treated like nothing happened, but everything was different, because you know that false sincerity where 'everything's okay' but don't upset her, 'cause she could just lose it and ...

And, well, me insisting that I not be called by my first first name anymore, but by my second first name didn't help any.

And that was so hard for Dad, ... he kept wanting to call me 'Mary' and ... but that name now ... would Mary show up when her name is called, ... I just kept trying not to freak out ... so I kept demanding my name is 'Melissa' now and that's what I should be called, and he tried, oh, he tried, but he looked lost around me when he visited, and I realized ...

I realized, I'm the one who pushed him out of the house. My older sisters share, you know? and I guess Dad really freaks out around girls around puberty, you know, when a girl gets ... you know more ...

God, writing this post during my period IS NOT HELPING!

... and then with me changing my name on him like that and who is he talking to and oh, I'm a queer now, too?

And, so, why would Mary come to me, when just around the bend, Dad leaves, so we're a broken family, then I get packed away to the loony bin and then I'm a flaming homo, a fag, a dyke b!tch that ...

That'd be a good one to bring up to my Bishop. 'Oh, I saw Mary, and she didn't say anything, and look at who she picked to reveal herself to and why?'

The Bishop would have the secretary on the phone in a heartbeat, and not to the Vatican, nosirree!

And what's the point anyway?

God, this Scotch is so good! It's just like velvety smooth, you know?

But I digress.

I believed in God before I saw Mary? Yes. I believed in God afterward? Yes. Did seeing Mary make me more fervent a believer?

Nah, I think I got scared sh!tless and hid, and am still hiding.

I mean, really, I should've gone to the Bishop in CT, and martyred myself. Really. 'I saw Mary.' 'You're seeing things, you're not stable.' 'Doesn't matter, I saw Mary.' And they would have locked me away forever. I should have martyred myself.

And I didn't.

I wimped out, and hid, cowardly, and there's only one reward for people who turn away from martyrdom, and it doesn't matter what age I was, 'cause a three year old boy just a few weeks ago went up to those Muslim terrorists killing those Catholics, and said, 'Enough, enough,' and they shot him, and now that little boy is in Heaven, because he was ...

Because he followed God to the very end, and when I saw Mary, I ran, and I'm still running, and I will run, with all my might into a knife or away from you or away from Mary or away from anyone and anything, because ...

because if I don't I'll have to look at the reflection of me in your eyes, be you Mary, or be you a mirror or be you a person I've betrayed because I've loved you and reached out in hope and weakness but then I show up and I do what I do.

There are the Elect. Augustine did what he did, then, but he was Elect, so he turned his whole life around, and went to Heaven.

The Elect go to Heaven, no matter what, cause it's in God's Plan, and God knows everything.

So, if there are the Elect, then are there the Damned? The ones who, no matter what they do, are destined for a final doom?

Yes. I know. I've seen her.

'And still you believe in God, `phfina?'

Yes. Satan, Lucifer, he doesn't have to work at believing in God. God is like so there for him, it's like asking you to disbelieve in air or gravity. 'Oh, doi-doi-duh, I'll disbelieve in gravity now and just walk off this skyscraper.'

Yeah, say that. And you so know you're gonna splat anyway.

Look, I saw Mary, and this wasn't a vision, this wasn't some delusion. This was real. Mary is real, and she's more real than me. She's so more real than me, that me, confronting her, face to face, I went away.

And that's just Mary. I didn't get the pleasure of meeting Jesus or God the Father or the Holy Ghost, I just met the little 14 year old girl who an angel visited and said 'Hail, full of Grace' to.

Mary was conceived without original sin, and she never sinned. You know what sin does? I do. It binds you. Mary is unbound.

I'm not a theologian, okay? I don't speak for the Church. In fact, this post will probably get me excommunicated.

And I say this to you. I believe in God.

And I say this to you.

I've felt God, and his angels. God has actually picked me up, by the scruff of my neck, and has kept me alive ...

... up to today, so far.

"The fool in his heart says, 'There is no God.'"

'There is no God' ... if that were true, I would have been dead now, several times. Several times.

And not always by my own hand, or the knife in it, but that truck. I felt ...

Look, there was no way it could have stopped, okay? On that slick road? As fast as it was going? That big truck? There was no way.

And it stopped so close to me I could feel the radiator breathing its heat on me.

That's it.

Great proselytization, `phfina: 'you should believe in God 'cause it's good [weakest argument in the world] and I saw Mary [proving I'm insane, so nothing I say, by definition, has any weight, meaning, or pull] ...'

... and it's a great comfort to me, that God is there, and that He ... well, even though He made just one mistake, that's a really good track record, and He even still loves me, although I have no idea why, but sometimes I just cry out 'God, God, please make it stop,' and it doesn't stop, but God is still there, and somehow I'm still there, and I know He carried me through that ... well, few hours where I couldn't even see although my eyes were open and I couldn't even breathe through my desperate gasps.

Yay.

And is this, all this, any of this, why I believe in God?

I dunno. I guess ... I believe in God 'cause I believe in God.

And I pray. I pray for me and I pray for you. All the time.

I love you.