Religious Journey III

During my high school years, I began reading books on all religions. I didn't know it at the time, but I was studying comparative religion. I and my friends were quite the budding intellectuals. It didn't make a difference which of the three high schools I went to. My friends and I were reading all the western philosophers, including Hegel, Kierkegaard, Goethe (my favorite at the time), Sartre, Camus, (Comte I didn't discover until college and was thrilled), Descartes, Heidegger; well, you get the picture. We would of course sit on the car in the Phoenix hot summer nights and discuss all these great ideas. We could, because you just know that a bunch of teenage boys (there were a couple of girls in our group) really and truly understood all this; we did! Truly. Going back a bit to my freshman year, and my religious studies, remember I was an ardent church goer at the time. I started with the Bhagavad gita, the writings of Khalil Gibran, a little about Buddhism, Shintoism; that's all I can remember right now. The die is cast. I was enthralled with lit (couldn't get enough Romantic Poetry), lots of modern poetry, all kinds of religious ideas, and a burning passion for God and Church. When I grow up, I'm going to be a philosopher, poet, writer, theologian. But...like I said, God had other plans.