The walk up the ancient steps is a difficult walk indeed. Chanting fills the air around you as ghosts sweep past. I stepped foot on the bottom step, naively believing I had the whole religion game figured out. And then I walked with the ghosts. Past orphaned children. Past crippled. Old. Blessed and thankful. Hopeful. Desperate. I know nothing of their religion because I know nothing of need. I follow them along paths they have walked for centuries. Paths sometimes as obscure as a trail-less trek over rocky mountains, sometimes as defined as a marble staircase.
A man thanks Gabriel for the birth of a healthy son next to a trio of orphan sisters praying tirelessly for help. A woman, old enough to remember when walking skeletons descended from the mountains in droves into the city, thanks God for delivering her child home safely from school.
And the logic escapes me. But then again, I pray or wish or long or search for some way that I could know what it honestly feels like to need to put so much trust into something so, indeterminate. And there's no logic in that. So I follow the ghosts.
