Jessica Rimington

Inside the cathedral the walls were white and the ceiling high. Every corner of anything --walls, table, door ---was adorned in gold paint. Teenage boys sang words in unison ---reading off music sheets in identical crisp folders. An elderly man shouted words and people responded with "amen" or memorized statements of response. There was a defined audience and a ---separate--- defined set of leaders. On the walls old, beautiful oil paintings were mounted --most conveying some sort of chaos or visually depressing set of circumstances hovering around the theme of human shame. My soul felt intoxicated with the richness of time as I gazed up at the adorned dome. But, whose time? On whose calendar? I found myself sitting there--- searching for meaning, for something to grasp onto. I looked at all the people around me and felt dizzy. My thoughts fell back to yesterday.

Until I came to Georgetown, for the most part my interactions with religious people were frustratingly stifled and unproductive.  I am an agnostic ---and at times swing atheist.  Admittedly, I have strong opinions on how organized religion has poisoned certain aspects of world politics and our ability to find our "common humanity"; however, I am not an "angry" agnostic/atheist.  You know --- the stereotype of the pagan protesting the pledge of allegiance with vengeance?  That's not me. I have always just wanted to talk about religion --to question. Perhaps it is just my small corner of.  Perhaps it is just the people who happened to be born in 1986 in Massachusetts and were thrown into school with me.  But, I found in depth conversations on religion few and far between in Georgetown, has been an entirely different story ----but, let's face it Georgetown is a small, wonderful bubble of intellectual elitism.