Religion is so interesting to me in that sense. I wasn't raised with any religion (not even atheism-as-quasi-religion) and I've become a little bit infatuated with the human aspects of religion -- the reasons someone might feel a calling to ministry, the way that it can lift people beyond their circumstances in periods of poverty, the guilt/confession aspect, all of it. It's just fascinating what an amplifier spirituality can be for both the best and the worst of humanity, and how the concept of "amplification" is reflected in church design (amphitheaters, mega-churches, and even old cathedrals...) and in auditory religious traditions, like church organs, choirs, Quran chanting, and so on and so forth.

I was really touched to see a woman in church on Christmas Eve who gave up her candle (I went to a candlelit ceremony) to a man who was sitting alone refusing to take Communion, even in a United Methodist church where there are no requirements to take Communion. He then got up and joined everyone else holding candles, although he kept his eyes down and kept crossing himself. What was eating at him to make him feel unable to take Communion? What made her turn away from the spectacle of the service and notice another human hunched over in a pew almost invisible?

The WWJD seems more like voicing hope -- "I hope when I'm confronted with something difficult that I will remember I think about the right thing." On the other hand, it's become such a style and so in-your-face on t-shirts and more than just bracelets that I tend to have the opposite reaction to flaunting WWJD paraphernalia, in that I wonder what's wrong with the person that they need to tell everyone around them that they follow "what Jesus would do." Is their own moral code that deficient?