The Holy Mother

I am walking to Omokkyo subway station, and am stopped by a dude from a church holding a survey. One question in the survey asks what religion I am, and the next one asks what religion I would like to be in the future. I ask him if this is really a necessary question to have on a survey. He doesn't understand. I ask him if there are many people aspiring to religions that they are unable to acquire. He doesn't understand. I ask him if anyone ever answers this question with anything other than their current religion. He doesn't know. I ask him if anyone looks at the survey I am filling out or if it is just a pretense for approaching me and giving me some literature. He admits this. I ask him to get to the literature. He says he doesn't have any in English. Then I ask him what he plans on doing next.

He points to some questions further down the survey about some passages in the bible referring to the Holy Mother, and about whether or not one could interpret this as meaning that God is a woman. I ask him if this is his point. He says that it is, that his church likes to think that God is a woman. I ask him if there are not several hundred passages in the bible that refer to God as a man. He says they prefer to think about this one passage, and that wouldn't it better for us all to think of God as a woman. I say that it doesn't matter to me whether a uniquely powerful being, the Creator of everything, has an inny or an outy, and that as He is unique, it probably doesn't matter to Him either. He doesn't understand. I then tell him that I have to go, but that when I knew God in Prague, he had a beard, so I tended to think of him as a man. "Oh." he says.