At a particular moment I looked for it in the church and went to religious services, but I clearly felt I didn’t find there what I was looking for. I asked my parents if I could go to Sunday school; it seemed interesting to experience and I had hopes I would find the answer there. My friends said it was really fun and nice and there were readings from the Bible.

 

And so it happened. On my own, on my bike to the village to Sunday school. I must say I can still see myself cycling in my Sunday best with those white knee stockings knit by my mother, with pinching elastics but never mind that now.                                                                 

On my arrival in the village I saw my friends waiting for me and we went inside together. We were in the village hall of the village where I lived. A somewhat elderly man read from the Bible.

Afterwards we received a sheet of paper and crayons to make a drawing of what we had just heard.

I remember that the man who had read to us came to see us and asked me what I thought of it all.    

After all those years I don’t remember my exact words, but it was something to the effect that what he told us was wrong and that it had not happened like that.

You might well image that he gave me a surprised and indignant look and I can tell you that he was not the only one.                                 

I don’t remember what he replied. But I do remember that what he said was a slap in the face for me.

                                                      

It had a very negative load for me and certainly considerable impact on my life and behaviour later on.

My spontaneity to tell what I felt and saw disappeared then and there and also my childlike artlessness vanished into thin air.

After this experience I never went back to Sunday school, I no longer felt welcome and utterly rejected in who I was.

I then decided to hold my tongue in the future, and not talk about certain things that were quite obvious to me and my close family circle. I realized that I had better not talk too much about that sort of thing because most people didn't understand and they would think me weird.

So, as I was scared that people would reject me, I started to adapt my behaviour and for years on end I didn’t show who I really was. I am still trying to let go of the last remnants as regards the fear of not being accepted and of being rejected by the outside world.  

 

I have now become aware that I had to learn a lesson here and to get to the bottom of religion and that I must be myself and show who I really am, whatever other people’s rejection and judgements about my person. I have learned and understood that being faithful to the other leads to not being faithful to myself.                                                       

I am now ready to be who I really am as a human being and if people think me weird, let it be so; I can no longer wear a mask: I am who I am!  And if someone doesn’t like that, well, bad luck.                           

Over 50 years later I realize that what I then said was exactly why I have come to this earth. And that what happened that Sunday morning lead me to shove myself aside in order to fit in the pigeon-hole where the masses want me to be. But that is no longer possible, I now understand I have to be myself and I can tell you that this has not come about without a struggle.             

 

That life is a hard school has become very clear to me in the course of the years.

Thanks to the lessons of the teachers of the World of Wisdom who came into my life at a later stage, I gradually started to understand why things happen as they happen and I can now look back with satisfaction and without the slightest grudge on the famous Sunday morning and everything else that has come to pass in my life…

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