At 25 I was fervently anti-religion and was obnoxiously vocal about it.

Before then, I grew up in a politically conservative and very catholic house, and didn’t know anything outside of that. To me, that was normal. Turned 18, joined the military, and started seeing more of the world. That was an eye-opening time for me because for a while I was living and working in the deep south while also making friends who were very left leaning. What I saw was that Christianity seemed to mostly be home to the meatheads, racists, nationalists, and gun nuts.

Since then I’ve had an on-again-off-again relationship with religion, but at 55 I’ve more or less decided that it’s not for me and it never really was. I don’t care what other people practice anymore, I avoid discussions about it, and I walk away when anyone starts preaching to me. Whenever the door-to-door preachers come to my house (yeah we get those in my neighborhood) I just politely tell them that I’m very comfortable with my spirituality and thank them for stopping by and saying hello.