Christmas revelations:

1) When I was on a quick trip back to the city that I used to live in, I was able to catch up with my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend and her family, and she was telling me how her kids’ religious education is going, like how she’s exposing them to different religions and holidays and ideas, and how their one (nice) (female) (Kenya-born) (evangelical Christian) babysitter is also permitted to talk to them at an age-appropriate level.

And, a few weeks ago at dinner, her oldest daughter said something about Jesus being dead, and her middle son who’s like 4 or 5 just stopped everything right then and was like, “What, Jesus is dead?!”, and it was just the biggest news in the world to him.

When we went to go play Legos, too, I was looking for ideas about what to build, and his first suggestion was a cross.

2) When I was hanging out catching drinks with the one (nerdy) (worked-out) (Brazilian) (visiting PhD) student, he told me that his participation with (Afro-Brazilian) religions is really recent, and only goes back like this year.

After his partner died in a car-crash, he said, he actually was in another car crash where this motorcycle veered into his lane and his car and the guy flipped off the motorcycle and was hospitalized with severe injuries -- right then I almost wanted to say that it sounded like he was cursed, but something told me not to say that -- and anyhow he was absolutely hysterical and he was so distraught that he could cause other people a death like the one that he had just suffered, that he had even thought about going and killing himself, if the man passed away from his injuries.

And, out of nowhere, without him talking to anyone about this, this girl he knows gives him a call, and she says her uncle had called her and told her that she needed to call him immediately, and this uncle guy who doesn't even know him at all is in a(n Afro-Brazilian) religion, and that’s how everything started, with his friend the guy’s niece even getting into it through him.

We also did a few things over Christmas, too, and at a zoo he was drawn to the wolves howling, and at a museum he was drawn to the medieval armor, since his orisha bears attributes of war.

During various ceremonies, too, he said, he has had various spirits ride him, and some spoke and designated him as their child, although he says there’s a lot of stigma in (Brazil) against this sort of thing, since it’s (black) religion.