religion

I used to believe…

When I was a very small child, for some reason, I pictured God as an enormous, kind looking zebra. Each night, I would say my prayers to a huge zebra! I still have no idea where that came from.

I used to believe…

The Xmas song's line actually is "And good will toward man"... I thought it was "Anger will Demand". Mom and I still laugh about it!

I used to believe…

At the end of Sunday School in church they used to take a collection (donation of money ) from each one of us.
I believed ( aged 4/5) that every week the teacher left Sunday School and went up to heaven to give the money to God!!!

I used to believe…

When I was 6-7ish I asked my grandmother where God was. She told me 'He lives in your heart', and so I thought everyone had a 'God' in our hearts and would walk around talking (while looking at me chest) to my God.

I used to believe…

"God is good, God is great, lettuce thank him for our food Amen"

I used to believe…

My father (a Pastor) would always talk about the Jews being the chosen people. I never could understand that everyone knew this, yet we were baptist.

I thought that we should all move to israel and convert so we could be chosen too.

I used to believe…

Born and raised Catholic with Mexican parents, my Mom never used the x-mas tree but the Nativity Scene. She told me that the 3 Wisemen will start walking towards Baby Jesus after Dec 25th to get there on Jan 6th. So I used to believe that the actually moved overnight and everymorning I would measured how much they moved the night before.

I used to believe…

When my grandma was little, she thought the words to "Jesus loves me" were "Jesus slaws me." She couldn't figure out what that meant, or why Jesus would want to "slaw" anyone!

I used to believe…

Growing up as an Irish catholic, each household was expected to make a meatier donation than usual at Christmas and Easter. These were known as the Christmas Dues and Easter Dues respectively.

I used to think that they were donations for poor Jewish people.

I used to believe that religion was something that was in another language. I was raised a Catholic. When I was young it was in Latin at church. My mother is Mexican so it was Spanish at home. It was a long time before I knew otherwise.

I used to believe…

When I was about 7 I didn't really pay that much attention at Mass. One night I heard my 8 year old brother reciting the Our Father to my dad at bed time. I thought he made it up and thought it was cool. The next Sunday we said my brother's prayer at church! I was really impressed!

I used to believe…

When I was about 5 or 6,my mom told me God was everywhere.I pictured him sitting invisibly next to me in the backseat,even watching me in the bathroom.I was highly embarassed that I was always being "watched by God" and that "he knows everything".Maybe that's why I was such a cooperative kid.

I used to think that Jesus was buried in my back yard, near some bushes behind my play fort. After all, my neighbor Jeffrey told me so and Jeffrey was 5 1/2 years old to my 4 years - so everything he said had to be true. My parents were quite suprised when I told them about this - especially because we never went to church!

I used to believe that the old church hymn about bringing in the sheaves was actually talking about some farmer bringing in the sheep. I guess I thought that sheaves was the plural form of sheep.

I used to believe that when you died and went to heaven, you'd get a big stack of video tapes of your life. I was sure God has a bunch of survellience cameras watching you constantly and when you died you could see them again. I seemed to remember this upon doing something embarassing - sure that not only would I see it again, but that everyone in heaven was watching it at that moment.

I used to believe…

When we were little kids in Alabama, my sisters and I loved to sing our two favorite hymns in church. Eventually we (like so many others) learned that what we called "The Gladly Song" actually wasn't about an unfortunate bear who needed an operation to get his eyes fixed (which was exactly what we could look forward to ourselves, because if we kept crossing our eyes like that, they'd get stuck).

One Sunday morning much later, my mother was totally mystified when we asked whether we'd get to sing our other favorite hymn - the Plastic Thunder song. We had to sing it for her before she understood which song we meant: "I've got a piece of Plastic Thunder standing, down in my heart, down in my heart to stay." She laughed so hard, she cried... the real lyrics? "I've got a peace that passeth understanding down in my heart"...

She'd heard us sing about Plastic Thunder countless times, but never listened closely enough to realize. Of course, to this day we still prefer our version!