religion

I used to believe…

As a preschooler, I though the final line of "Away in a Manger", "And take us to heaven to live with thee there", was "And take us to heaven to live with the BEAR". I pictured Jesus at his throne accompanied by a huge shadowy black bear. Which was, of course, terrifying.

I used to believe…

When my sister and I were about 8 and 10 years old we overheard some adults talking about Martin Luther nailing his thesis to the door. My sister decided to show off at Sunday school and told the teacher about Martin Luther nailing his feces to the Castle Church door. The teacher about wet her pants laughing as did a few of the older kids. We were bewildered until only a short time later when the real meaning of the word was explained.

I used to believe…

When I was 5 I used to think that the clouds were where God and the Angels were. When we were flying to Europe when I was 6, I looked despritly around in the window hopeing to see an angel. When we got to Europe, I realized there were no Angels up in Clouds...

I used to believe…

at the end of a prayer in school assemblies i thought you had to say amen really loudly otherwise you would get in trouble with the teacher. We all used to sit on the floor in assemblies and i thought you had to bend over as much as possible (so your head was really near your feet) otherwise the teachers thought you weren't praying

I used to believe…

do you know the swahili song that goes Siahumba kukan yenhe kwen kos (sorry i don't speak any swahili and this spelling is probably completely wrong!), or the english translation, We Are Marching In the Light of God. When I was young and when everyone sang that song in church, I always used to think on the kwen kos bit they were singing about cous cous!

I used to believe…

When I was 5 I read a book about mummies and my sister told me that live people were made into mummies and then they had to live like that forever. I think we both misunderstood the book a little.

I used to believe…

there was a man at my church when i was little, and my older sister and i called him "the angry man" because his eyebrows were in a weird position so he always looked angry. we felt bad that he was angry all the time, and i wondered why on earth his wife married him...

I used to believe…

when i was really young, like about 3 my parents were out of town for a week and we had a babysitter. she took us to church, which was something i hadn't done before since we weren't religious. it was excruciatingly boring but after a while of sitting there i thought i would try to listen to what was being said (because i couldn't see over the pews i thought it was just over a loud speaker or something). i coulnd't figure out why they kept talking about something called "cheesus" and couldn't fathom what the big deal with cheese was. i still don't get it, to be honest.

I used to believe…

when i was about 10, my mom broke the news that santa, the easter bunny, and the toothfary were not real... so i aksed her, "mom was it you the whole time?" and she said "yes baby, it was" so i looked at her, started crying and said "MOM?! ARE YOU GOD TOO?!"

I used to believe…

when i was about 4 or 5 i used to beleive that jesus was a horse....well we were always told that he was born in a manger, so it seemed logical, i just couldnt figure out why we were all worshiping a horse.....

I've almost died laughing reading about 'Mary, full of grapes', but in other languages that prayer also causes some trouble;

In Dutch, we say 'Mary, full of grace' as 'Maria, vol van genade'. But since I didn't listen too well as a kid, I always thought they were saying 'Maria, vol van garnalen', which litterally means 'Mary, full of schrimps'.

Go figure.

I used to believe…

When I was just a little kid, there were Coca-Cola commercials on at the time that would always end with a person taking a drink of Coke, and saying: "Ahhh". The priest at my church would always say "Ahhh" (but more of an exhaling of breath than an Ahhh) after he took a drink from the chalice. This lead me to believe that the priest had Coca-cola in his chalice.

I used to believe…

In the church I used to go to, there was this huge crucifix above the altar with a pretty realistic-looking dead Jesus model on it. I used to believe this model Jesus was actually Jesus' body and we were the luckiest church in the world because we had the real Jesus.

I used to believe…

When I was little, and was taken to church on a communion Sunday, the trays of juice and bread were always covered with a white sheet, resulting in a large mound in the middle of the table. I always thought that there was a pregnant woman laying underneath the sheet and we were going to see her have the baby right there.

I used to believe…

When I was little and was sent to my room, I used to imagine that God used to tell me off in my room, the funny thing was that he looked like inspector gadget without legs (he floated near my window).

i used to think that when we sang ' sing hosana sing hosana' in assemblies at school that we was singing about my friends mum who was called rosanna!!! and i used to be so jealous that her mum was so special to be in a song!!!

I used to think, for some reason, that you wern't actually allowed to go into graveyards without an adult with you, so if I ever went into my local cemetery, which was a churchyard cemetery, I always imagined there was a priest inside the (non-catholic) church lurking around and spying out the windows(stained glass) who would come out screaming and yelling if he saw me and chase me out of the cemetery.

I used to believe…

when people at church would say amen during a prayer in agreeance to what had been said in the prayer, i used to think they said amen because they thought the prayer was over. You can imagine how proud of myself i was as i was smarter than a bunch of grown ups and ALWAYS said amen at the right time. 0=D