with all due respect...

this month is one of experiences. i had to say goodbye to coworkers and it was sad. i still read my old works' emails to see how things are going while i am at my new job. but my new job is pretty cool. i get to organize visits and have a few kids that i work with one on one. i also get a work phone. i'm such an f'n pro now.

being a pro kind of sucks a little though. i have to get up much earlier now and i get home at like seven. it's weird. i have gone like six years without really eating breakfast and i am not used to eating it. also, getting sleepy at six o' clock is outrageous.

i went to the festival of lights the other night. basically it is a little grove that is dipped in christmas. a bunch of the trees have lights and there are cool light figures. a bad part about this is that it is run by christians. they rep real hard. i was shadowing a visit and it was me, a co-worker, and their kid who really likes me i hear.

now while i don't mean to get on a digital soapbox, but i guess this is the place to do it. i think a funny thing about most religions is that they exploit natural human kindness. i was nice to everyone i met, even though i didn't want to be a lot of the time. a christian might say that i was acting very christian but i thought i was acting very bryan.

we went to see the chorus singers and they were in a church. when i was walking in an elderly lady told me to take off my hat. i begrudginly did, but before we entered, the client said that he didn't want to go in. he was kind of standing in the way of the entrance and a little slow to move. the girl on the other side of the glass door said "you could get out of the way" and shortly laughed. i had unchristian thoughts. my first plan was to punch through the glass door, grab her head, and rub her neck along the shards. a millisecond later i caught myself and figured that this plan wasn't a great life choice. instead, i asked my little buddy to follow me out of the way.

the experience really made me think about how judeo-christian believers might think about the kids i work with. i mean sure, i'm going to hell because i don't believe in magic carpenters, but what the s are they doing to make things better? ringing bells outside safeway? i think about the kids that were raped when they were two, witnesses to incredible acts of violence, beaten, burned, disfigured, born with incurable diseases, molested, and mentally unstable. no omnipitent presence intervened. and none will ever erase their pasts. they have more right to question a god than i do. but what did my little friend do? he told me the story of christmas and jesus' birth. belief systems are very dangerous because they tackle both of the most important life motivators: fear and faith.

this is one of my many new friends..................hamilton!