Phew! What a stress with these GayGames! Actually, I'd relaxed while dancing and had myself divided into shifts on Tuesday and Thursday from 3pm to 9pm. The pro finals were scheduled to start at 7pm. These rounds started three hours late on Tuesday and we were finished by one o'clock in the morning! Computer crashes, incorrect lists for the judges, missing couples, rounds that had to be repeated - the first day of the tournament could hardly have been more chaotic for the dancers and helpers. That's why I went to volunteer again yesterday (Wednesday) instead of looking for other athletes as planned. This time it went a lot better, although more than half of the volunteers didn't turn up for the early shift. But the finals were well attended and a real eye-catcher: Men 18+ Latin, that's all I need to say!
Satisfied and exhausted, I made my way home. I passed a GayGames sign in the pedestrian zone with the words "Homosexuality is a sin" scrawled on it. I actually wanted to calm down a bit, but I was already at 180 again! I heard from an acquaintance that some free church had been handing out flyers about the sinfulness of gay and lesbian life the days before. What holes have they crawled out of again, I wondered? Christians can be really annoying. After all, I don't hand out flyers with "Stupidity is a sin" at the church congress either. Although...
As a godless person, in the best sense of the word, I just want to be left alone by these fairy tales and legends about transcendent beings. Especially when I hear that we need Christian values. What rubbish! Everything good about so-called Christian values can also be found in a humanistically enlightened society, everything bad serves solely to legitimise the exclusion, defamation and degradation of all those who do not want to follow the "path of enlightenment" or cannot do so due to an obscure creation myth - such as gays and lesbians.
I'm not talking about the whole "church is so power-hungry" blah-blah. The institutional abuse of faith has existed for as long as there have been religions. You can argue about their sense and nonsense just as fruitlessly as you can about the GEZ. I am concerned with how "faith" influences the individual. In how they see themselves and how they differentiate themselves from others. I am a thoroughly logical person and therefore anything spiritual is incomprehensible to me. Why can't people take their lives and the responsibility for them into their own hands instead of placing them in the imaginary hands of a god? This would not necessarily spare us suffering and injustice, but we would be more open to new and different things.
And the answer to the meaning of life? The fact that we are alive should be enough to give it a new meaning every day. At least that's what I expect from my life. Anyone who waits for the Easter bunny, sorry, dear God, to give them meaning may have missed out on their life sooner than they can experience it...
But now it's off to the swimmers. Let's see which divine images can be marvelled at!
Your Markus
