Hey there. I'm still spinning some of this around in my head; it's been back and forth between the back and front burners. I started a poem, which I pretty much am miserable at any time I'm actually consciously trying, (and probably some would say a worse failure at when I'm not trying,) and then I tried writing something and couldn't figure anything out. So today I got back in a groove and I'm going to see where it gets me. I already wrote a buncha stuff on my site.

But specifically what's got me thinking here are your numbers 1 thru 3. First, the speaking-in-tongues thing: that stuff just fascinates me. Being from a decidedly NOT that way religious background, maybe there's something "oh, what is going on there?" about it. But really it's more than that... there's a real power in letting the mouth physically do whatever it wants to do; I've occasionally broken into that sort of rant on my own. It feels like tourettes or something when I get like that, but it's always ultimately under my control. So there's some weirdness about me that's really probably unrelated.

More importantly, your statement about not feeling comfortable around religious people strikes a chord. Possibly I narrowed in on my own reason for it in what I wrote originally (wherever the hell that was... that earlier quote that this was a response to,) but I'm not sure that covers everything. I wonder if it's being uncomfortable around people who really think everyone should believe what they believe? Or is there something more? For me sometimes I get uncomfortable because I don't feel like having the spectre hanging there about me being an atheist -- in professional situations, primarily. (I say atheist there intentionally -- I never know when I'm up against a jesus-guy that really thinks there's something criminal about not being that way, and so lumps everyone else into that atheist thing.)

#3 - yes. Yes. a deep yearning for a deep transcendant connection. So what IS that? As a person who always first tries to think biologically about these things, I wonder if it isn't a survival thing; if a person really couldn't think that there might be something beyond what he or she could see... erm... I dunno. I'm getting to where I don't know. I do want to mention though that just talking about that yearning for mysticism being biological frustrates the very drive. Because it defeats itself. If it's biological, the biology is going to do whatever it can to keep it there. So. I know I've got a lot to say about this but it's still swimming around.

#4 is touched on in my current post.

Okay!