Chapter Three

In the magnet program at my high school, I met all manner of intelligent kids. I was certianly still a misfit, but at least we were all misfits together. And the scholastic program kept us so busy we hardly had time to notice social ineptitude. Somehow, spiritual questions drained to the perifery of my awareness. Many kids in my classes and even many teachers were atheists. My tenth grade biology teacher took the cake in this department. A die-hard darwinian evolutionist, he would often get into red-faced arguements with one particular Christian student, attacking the intollerable ignorance of his Creationist beliefs. I didn't think this was right, but was far too shy to speak up for him. To speak up for the possiblity of alternatives. That maybe this world is bigger than what we can see.

With little room for spiritual expression, I just went with the atheist flow and did my best to keep my head afloat in the turbulent academic waters of Advanced Placement classes, singing in many of the school's award winning choirs, and practicing my sport/physical education replacement: horseback riding. And so passed the high school years. I graduated with honors in the top 10% of my class and achieved the state championship in my division in California's Pacific Coast Horse Show Association, but I still felt this icky and unrelenting sense of lack. I kept at it more because others told me to than because anything I was doing was making any sense.