1 lost
my
by Mark Baldrige
I LOST FAITH
It seems stupid to say, but I did.
Faith is an atrophied capacity in me.
I’ll never view the world through
those pince-nez, the liberating blind
DAMN NEAR MY SANITY
I remember checking the keys in my pocket throughout the day. To be sure
they were still there.
It wasn’t obsession OR compulsion - just an abiding sense that, if God
might not be real, how sure was I of the keys?
I remember meeting a guy, about that time, a piano player. He got no
thumbs! Not even scar tissue as I recall, just these thin flippers. I never asked, —
but I suppose he was born that way, poor fella’.
I went around one whole day, trying to do without. Held the house key
OK, between my first and second fingers, once I picked it from among the
other keys on the ring (tougher), and it slipped into the lock just fine. But
then, how do you turn it?
Does he use both hands?
ersofbelief. ■ ■ act HOPE IN THE
It t°°k a while for me to think I RESURRECTION
could ever be happy again, but from «£2fT MY Strangely, it seems I needn’t
toe begmnmg there was never any m5##SE OF have; Frank Tipler, a physicist who
“"l^e burdens *£•ft? A*. 4 H ’ F* ^ 'H" 7m - MORAL COMPASS
refuse to climb back onto your shoul- R PERSON ^ .11, thk^nmnl pfplv^pr^1 a r nnti nri • This didn’t last long.
ders They don’t want you anymore. U"«°t Biat back. Far to the ftoute a giant compel- Someone cried, “Moral Relativism!”
i-ISsSrataK.'S etwtllhave saved meiaprogtlm ^J^tSton^Etoics.”
quick to get myself bom again either,' itstm.lessmemory banks where I shouted “Show me the way!” „ t . __ ,
ifl were you. will frolic, along with each of you, in find I have little aptitude for evil, as 1 loathe all the instruments
3 'TtSTto.s as a mathemati of control. But toe boo. print ofbourgeots values will no. have van
cal certaSty1 ^ mathematl ished too SOOn from the back of my neck.
LOST: 'MY VIRGINITY Lo°ks ^lS I*^1C1S1thaf done At this point I’d like to add that among other things, I gained a new.
Actually, I know exactly where it went: m°re 311 1S s e o ipp mg. open, non-judgmental attitude, which people who new me w
The first time I had sex, or shortly (very shortly) there- can hardly believe,
after, the young lady present at the moment referred to the I think they find it appalling. . • „ fmm a
previous evening - when we’d done nothing more than roll e P M S E When I argued, loudly, that virginity was a fictio 8 8
around with our hands in each other’s pants - as, “last night . ^qST flap of flesh, well, the room got real quiet allasuaaen.
when we were making love...’’and my virginity vanished in 1 Qf SELT -
a puff of insight ? u facedlie.l I also got laid.
Virginity? Hah! Where I’m from you can’t give the stuff Actually, that’s a bald- e^mpor
WW' lust said it as a jibe atthes for
tenCewn^stTndover-reach^g | L0ST THE MUSIC
my ° mind-boggbnS'in SC V ’ And thls 1S serious and what took the longest to get over: I lost the singing. My
seJVSf’nortance. , „ know, 1 “fellowship” was so ultra- so arch- that, well, they were what I call “-damental” cause
self-impo well, y°u *nit me there weren’t no “fun” in it.
I song is probably abo sg_ Not when I was coming up:
tb? make up for lX by P° No dancing, no swearing, no gambling. Church three times a week!
• 1 pleasant singinS v0ice ’" My mother once told me, as I toyed with a fly I had caught in a jar, “They tortured
We wore our laces straight.
(They’ll plead, “We’re not like that anymore!
“We wouldn’t have killed the prophets like our fathers did!”
-This is a private joke, between me and them. You’d have to’ve read the Bible
to get it.)
AND UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WAS A MUSICAL INSTRU
MENT OF ANY KIND TO BE ALLOWED ON CHURCH PRECINCTS.
As a consequence, we wound up singing, in perfect, four-part harmonies, the
shaped notes of our grandfathers. And, Brother, when we all got to singin,’ it was like
the angels up in hibbin praising sonny Jesus.
But except for singing, women were to keep silent in church.
At my best friend s funeral, his father had to read a message from Mom and
sister, as they would not, by custom, have been allowed to speak.
Barbarians!
And even with all I lost when I lost my faith, even things I may not know about yet, I can say with true repentance that my only real regret is that I did not slip away sooner...