Touchy Subject

Religion can be a touchy subject. To some, a query about religious beliefs or practices will invade their privacy. To some, it will allow them to introduce you to their lord and master, Baphomet. One needs to walk carefully.

In the 1960s, I shared an apartment on Boston’s Beacon Hill with an eclectic bunch of young men with diverse religious backgrounds. There was the Monk, a former monastic esthetic; Mike the Vike, an atheist; The Teahead, an excellent catholic school boy gone agnostic; my best friend who was experimenting with the musings of the Buddha; and assorted others who wandered in and out at various intervals. The cast of occasional characters included a former Jesuit, practitioners of a Satanic cult, and many others.
The household was a sort of ballroom where everyone danced to their tune and step. Religion did not usually come up as a topic of conversation. Spirituality did. But we were much more likely to discuss the biology of sexual intercourse than whether the Father was one with the Son.
No one in the group was thin-skinned about faith. Or so involved in an exclusionist set of beliefs that it made co-existing difficult. Up-tight people generally avoided the raucous and irreverent doings of a crowd that played games like Sacreligous Roulette ( you sat in a circle and blasphemed; the one who was struck by lightning first won) or had sacrilegious cartoons painted on the walls ( the Camel squeezing through the eye of the needle was always my favorite).

Although others referred to our digs as a crash pad, we insisted that we only accept the cream of the crop to crash on our mattresses.

Daily writing prompt

Do you practice religion?

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