I met a nice boy in work yesterday, a musician. Cute, bright, smiley; after he finished his gig we went for a cup of coffee (of course when I say coffee, I mean tea. I'm not sophisticated enough to drink coffee, or even earl grey. Milky, milky tea...) and got to talking about his day job. Turns out he works in a shelter for Dublin's homeless. Genuinely interested, I started asking him all sorts of questions about it and quietly admiring how he does what he does and the easy way he talks about it. I had somewhere to be and so did he, so we walked a bit of the way, chatting more. I mentioned that I'd like to get involved in that kind of work in my home town and asked him which organisation he was working with. Turns out it's the Legion of Mary.
I didn't really know what to say. Raised a Catholic at least until my early teens, I should probably know who they are and what they do but I hadn't a notion and I really didn't want to ask. The name conjured up images of militant Eucharistic ministers wearing pious looks and pearls and smelling faintly of piss, so naturally I was having trouble reconciling that with the cute and scruffy boy I was flirting with. Fuck it, I thought, play along and google it later, see what brand of mentlers he belongs to.
I think of myself as an agnostic atheist* and I find that despite myself, I feel very uncomfortable around devoutly religious people. Most of all around those whose beliefs would have them spread the word and recruit others to their cause. Given that I'm very comfortable in my non-belief it shouldn't bother me in the slightest, I suppose, but it does. So where I should have maybe asked the cute scruffy boy for his number, I balked and went on my merry way. I did think about it, but his offer of a miraculous medal as a parting gift was just too much for me, so I ran.
Not literally, just in my head. Hightailing it off down Fleet St without so much as a handshake is too rude even for me.
*Summed up by Wikipedia as "I don't know, but I don't think so".
I didn't really know what to say. Raised a Catholic at least until my early teens, I should probably know who they are and what they do but I hadn't a notion and I really didn't want to ask. The name conjured up images of militant Eucharistic ministers wearing pious looks and pearls and smelling faintly of piss, so naturally I was having trouble reconciling that with the cute and scruffy boy I was flirting with. Fuck it, I thought, play along and google it later, see what brand of mentlers he belongs to.
I think of myself as an agnostic atheist* and I find that despite myself, I feel very uncomfortable around devoutly religious people. Most of all around those whose beliefs would have them spread the word and recruit others to their cause. Given that I'm very comfortable in my non-belief it shouldn't bother me in the slightest, I suppose, but it does. So where I should have maybe asked the cute scruffy boy for his number, I balked and went on my merry way. I did think about it, but his offer of a miraculous medal as a parting gift was just too much for me, so I ran.
Not literally, just in my head. Hightailing it off down Fleet St without so much as a handshake is too rude even for me.
*Summed up by Wikipedia as "I don't know, but I don't think so".
