Our dog looked for bread at the neighbour’s and would take his chance bringing a stolen loaf over the pales at the back. If he had a better conscience he would not do this, I figured, not understanding that my own conscience as a child was being manipulated, amongst so many others, on an industrial scale.
I seemed to figure it however, more quickly than others. I remember they gave me the real body and blood of Christ which I consumed, but it clearly had no effect, so I must be abhorrent and damned I thought; by the time the headmaster prayed to the group of us in the chapel, a voice in my head which I know with certainty must have been my own, heretically and very loudly was saying that I do not believe any of this.
At the back of the church chattering with the mountain lowries and at some embarrassment no doubt to his place in the community, was my father. Heaven was only guaranteed apparently according to some theologian actuary, to those in the body of the church not on the porch or at the rear. I so wanted him to be there with the rest of us in heaven at the end of our lives, had nightmares of him in the conflagration simply because of a minor locational issue. Felt better about my Dad when I got rid of those beliefs.
Main problem were the dreams, internal dramas of the nightly kip; we thought these worrying experiences came through a veil from the spirit world, but they were really just through a veil from the subconscious mind where scenarios belted along just beneath the surface waiting for sleep to flicker at which time they seized the moment and took the wheel. Mistake spirit world for your own subconscious that is some error. Trace the egregious error back through the ages and once acknowledged observe every one of those doctrines collapse.
We learnt these sort of unjustified religious beliefs at our wooden desks then moved paradoxically straight on to the observation of a living cell. Harry Christian’s family in the meanwhile, managed their futures when their orchards were exterminated as best they could, found other endeavours such as carting goods or running cattle in the rural area on society’s edge where I would later spend most of my adult life.