Losing My Religion Part III: Heaven Is Other People
Growing up immersed in religion meant there was nothing for me to be converted to , but arriving at adolescence awkward, lonely, and insecure meant I had plenty of things to be converted from. That's probably true of most high school freshmen, fed up with being children, their moods swinging without warning, clearly unready for adult pursuits. The reboot I had hoped would come with baptism never materialized, so I needed something else, something more radical, powerful, effective. It took me two years to find it, two years of privately sobbing into my pillow behind a locked bedroom door, two years of longing for a deeper, more sincere connection than I could find at school or at church. It wasn't even me who found it. My parents learned of a church camp for artistically oriented teens, and sent me to it. MADD (Music, Art, Drama, and Dance) camp was exactly what I'd needed: a place where I could mingle with (mostly) safe Methodist youth, playing my trumpet, writ...