I think she knows that I've fully given up walking the same path as her and have started inching towards a path that would throw her into a fit. She gave me a ride home before she went to church and somehow the topic of weird churchs came up. I told her about the time someone gave me an edible before going to one of those hellfire and brimstone churches that handled snakes, and how it bad, bad time. I was lucky the snakes didn't come out that day.

From there, she went on a rant about hateful churches who do Christianity wrong (which is funny, because her church is clearly very MAGA leaning, although they won't say it directly.) I fully agree with her, but then the topic went on to god's love and an emphasis on how everyone needs it, and I realized she probably wasn't talking about those church anymore. She was trying to preach to me like I wasn't already baptized and hadn't gone through the saving ritual a dozen times before that out of sheer desperation.

Someone must have told her what I've been interested in. Maybe she's just more observant than I gave her credit for. Maybe she listened to that Florence + The Machine album I tolder that my daughter loved and it put some kind of fear in her, because her whole rant sounded desperate and frantic. Fanatical. I'm sure she believes in it fully, but it doesn't feel peaceful or calm. Most of them seem to walk on eggshells and babble on incessantly when proselytizing. Even when I believed, or tried to, I never felt at ease like they told me I should.

Anyway, I did a little (not do deep) research into what some of my family would have celebrated before Christianity. Dad's family is mostly Dutch with a sprinkly of Irish. Mom's is a mix of English, Irish, Scotish, Swiss, and maybe a few other things. It all boils down to Germanic/Norse paganism at its core. Only two things are stopping me from diving in.

1. As I stated in another blog, I don't feel like any diety deserves to be worshiped anymore.

2. I still have that fear in me that if I step out of line, no matter how many times I was saved or baptized, I'll go to Hell. I know that's the conditioning I grew up with. I know that's the hellfire and brimstone. I know that the Bible was written by men and borrowed from other religions. But that paranoia is still there. I want it gone.