Ever since I could remember, I had loved animals. If you were to ask me which one I favored most, I would say "All of them! Even the crocodiles!" I collected little plastic figurines, and to this day I have accumulated over 500 of these. Every animal that has ever lived (including some dinosaurs) sits in a green bin that is kept in my spare bedroom's closet. Every day I would watch Animal Planet and pointed out all of the animals that I knew by their scientific name. What started this fanfare was the first real non-fiction science book I had ever owned: The Complete Encyclopedia of Animals.
Now this wasn't your childish "The dog goes woof" type book. This was a complete comprehensive guide to every mammal, bird, fish, reptile, amphibian, insect and invertebrate known in existence.... Okay, maybe not all of them, but this was definitely not a slim volume. And at the tender age of six, it was my choice of literature. So I read the whole thing, countless times over. Because my wild imagination, I had no more desire to read the usual fictional picture books that most children my age favored, and instead found the same whimsy in science and nature.
So my mother bought me more encyclopedias. Some on geology, some on astronomy, and others on cultures and destinations. She wasn't exactly enthralled by my desire for knowledge itself, but rather that because of this I had the vocabulary of a college graduate by the age of eight. The books escalated over time until it came to The New Book of Knowledge. My then-lifetime fascination ended with one word: Bible.
My family was going through a lot of hardships at the time. My parents were fighting, we were tight on money and I was mercilessly harassed at school. The first real religious installation in my life was through the unbiased NBK definition of the word "Bible". I can't remember it exactly what it said, I remember in it's lengthy description the existence of a higher being that loved you, no matter what happened. Whenever I felt troubled by my life, I turned to that page and read it over and over again, until I dug out from my closet the children's Bible my parents bought me many years before. I started flipping through that in favor of my encyclopedias.
At the beginning, I was sad and confused. What my other books have taught me was that the world began with an explosion, and then there were dinosaurs, then humans evolved. In the Bible, this God just said "Let there be light" and then everything was just there after seven days. I did not believe it, but I was so desperate to find something to hold on to that I rejected everything I had learned and forced myself to take everything in the Bible as factual and realistic.
I kept persisting with this, going to church every week, reading Christian literature like crazy, but I never felt any different. I saw people raising their hands high, looking almost possessed by this God while the gospel preformed, and I wanted to feel that ecstasy, too. When I was 11, I heard that the only way to salvation was to be baptized. I thought that if I was, this God would magically appear in my life and he would finally help me. So by the Crossing Church in a hot tub inside the Marcus Theater, I was baptized. And I will always remember the feeling I had when I was pulled out of that heavy, warm water.
Absolutely nothing.
To this day, I am working on getting all of that knowledge back that I forfeited for religion. Not only that, but the knowledge of myself and spiritual excellence. Nirvana, one might say. I have recently entered disciplines such as yoga and meditation, but to this day, I am faithless and remain searching.
But evidence of my former knowledge still remains in a green bin inside my spare bedroom closet. Maybe I should dig that out today.
