I saw the most epic thing today, which restored my faith in humanity.

Jesus Painter (actually his partner) was here again. UMBC's drum circle also happened to be practicing in the same place. I think you can see where this is going.

Now, first for a little background. Jesus Painter is a fundamentalist preacher that comes by on campus, often with his associates. He preaches how Muslims and Hindus are going to Hell (often to their faces), preaches about Evil-lution in front of the Biology building, and- well, never mind the gay students. His church brought in little kids one time to proselytize and tell people about Jesus.

Most of the time people get very upset with him. I've seen a woman crying because of him, and Muslim students screaming at him. Atheists get into shouting matches with him. A good number of people will mock and insult him, and usually there's at least one, "Hail Satan" or "Raptor Jesus, Hallelujah!" or something like that. It gets very ugly and sometimes security has to come.

This is not what happened. By the time I got there, incense was burning, two girls were dancing with hula hoops, and the drummers were pounding one hell of a rhythm and making it difficult to hear the preacher. One of the drummers picked up a reggae tune, his voice carrying over the sermon to the crowd around him.

"Preacher mon, why do you say I'm goin' to hell?"

The preacher carries on, trying to keep the attention on him. The crowd takes the cue. It starts clapping to the drums.

"Heaven is where my heart is, and my heart is here." The drummer begins to dance with one of the hula girls, who doesn't seem the least to mind.

The preacher is petrified. It's the first nice day in September, and people are having fun despite him.

The singer gives up his stage for an aspiring freestyle rapper. A middle-aged office worker in a shirt and tie walks out of the admin building, maybe on lunch break, and stands there a while, eying first the preacher, then the revelers, looking confused. Finally, he sits down by a djembe and started tentatively accompanying a punk kid drumming away in a tree. By the time the first singer picks up his song again, joined by a second tenor and an improvised beatboxer, most people have forgotten about hatin'.

I don't care if any of them were philosophy majors or not, it was the most extraordinary theological debate I've ever seen.

To Love like Christ

Sometime last year, I was watching a documentary on a pair of Siamese twins when my roommate came in. "Oh my God, I don't see how they live," she said, as if it would have been a mercy for them to have died.

I was an atheist then, but still had a little of the lion in me, and replied, "You call yourself a Christian!"

My anger has abated somewhat after upward of six months, realizing with sadness the difficulty with which people comprehend lives different from their own. After all, regarding the Siamese twins, they are otherwise healthy young girls, with a loving, stable family and friends, who excel in school and sports, who do anything any pair of sisters ought. There is a worse thing in life than being physically attached to someone very special to you, and that thing is to not have anyone special at all.

I have tried to love people with no other friends among 6 billion earthly souls, not because they have no friends (for loving someone because they have no friends is as shallow as loving someone because they have many friends) but because they are good. They are fellow suffering pilgrims. If I could love you more I would love you more, if I could give you more, I would give you more. I shall try to love as much and as often as I dare. I want to love the people who no one else loves.

You are my people. You are my people. You are my people.

Lord, let me love my people like Christ loves us. Let them love Christ like Christ loves us. And let me love you too.

Have mercy on us, Lord.

Let me do your will.

At St. Paul's Cathedral, one of the priests was attending to a service. I was listening to the tranquil, melodious echo of his voice disembodied amid the stone vaults. From the dome there was a shaft of pure white light that was more than simply photons. I will not say that it was God in the Christian sense, but there was something else there, illumination of the soul and a preternatural stillness. It stirred a deep yearning in me, to be close to that something, that deep majesty and peace, and something quite unlike the raw natural power at Phoenix Peak.

I was with other people, Steve, an atheist, and Sandi, a Wiccan. Having not shared my experience with anyone, I heard Steve muse about the wasted resources, devotion, toil, and inspiration for what to him was ultimately a useless phantom superstition. I was startled and asked if anyone had felt what I felt. I pretty much got in response a resounding "no" - both of them had felt absolutely nothing, and Sandi was uncomfortable with the service to boot (which I guess is natural if you're a Wiccan listening to Christian prayer). All of which goes to show the complete subjectiveness of religious experience, but rather dismaying all the same. On the other hand, both of them waxed rapturously (perhaps not religiously) at Stonehenge and Oxford's Blackwell's (what?! why, Steve, why?? :P), while all I saw was a circle of falling rocks.

A Church completely made out of Legos

Oh, and while you're at it... The Brick Testament, a rendition of the Bible, as told in Lego.

I have this reverse anti-Semitism thing going on. I respect Jews a great deal more than I respect Christians.

"The difference, in short, between offending Christians and offending atheists is this: Many times, when you offend a Christian, it's because he sees chocolate ice cream on the ice cream shop menu and he hates chocolate, or his children love chocolate but he hates their chocolate. Common sense would dictate the offended Christian to not order chocolate next time or not let his kids eat it. When you offend an Atheist, it's because the shop only serves chocolate and MAKES HIM EAT IT. "

Happy St. Paddy's Day. "For Better of For Worse" Sunday comic strip was mildly offensive to me for some reason. I'm sure the Irish were perfectly happy without Christianity.