SOL20: Talking Religion

            Today has been such a patchwork that it’s hard to know what to pick out as my slice. But it’s what I’m in the midst of right now that I will report on.

            Last spring, I met a young woman who had come to New York City as part of a Focus on the Family antiabortion event. A few hundred people filled a couple of blocks of Times Square. I had come as part of a counterprotest, since I support women’s right to making their own reproductive decisions without legislation telling them what to do. I always want to talk to people who are so vociferously against abortion about my own abortion experience, because it is one that rarely is talked about. (I was 48 when I had my only abortion, and don’t even get counted in the statistics, which usually report on women ages 15 to 45.)

            I got into conversation with this woman who had come from the Midwest with her family, which included her young teenage daughter who she had had at 18. She had had a hard time when her daughter’s father left her, but becoming “born again” had helped her get her life together. Her life was very different from mine, but we were interested in each other. We exchanged e-mail addresses, and have since exchanged e-mails.

            Today she sent me an e-mail, partly inspired by the coronavirus, because it prompted her to want to evangelize me. She worries about offending me, and I worry about offending her with my response. Because I have spent a couple of hours this evening writing to her about my feelings about religion and why I will never believe as she does, but still respect her right to her beliefs. And I hope she can respect my right to my beliefs even if that means, for her, that we will not meet after death.

            So that’s my slice for today—and I am still in the middle of it.

            Be healthy, everyone.

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I’m participating in the 13th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 20 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!