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Show 55-1* tween suffering and damnation? At least my father' s group (i'd not deliberately exile people, as primitive trizbal cultures rt'd There was psychological pressure to conform - but I ' with growing alarm was discoveringAthat there was psychological pressure everywhere. Danny had always exerted more than his share of influence over me for reasons I did not then understand, and only now begin to contemplate with any degree of light. He and his thin-lipped wife had taken an unusual interest in Brian and me, courting a 'friendship' as opposed to a family relationship with us. "You can't choose your family', but you can choose your friends," they often said. They mouthed each other's phrases until it was impossible to tell who thought what. They seemed as fused in character as my mother and Aunt Helga - a true marriage. Since their temple vows had been said, many changes had taken place. Danny had left the Church, in spirit though not in fact. He had been strongly influenced by his professors who argued that existential modern man must not be distracted from contemplating the absurdity of the universe. A childish fantasy like religion, they asserted, only clouded one's Perspective of the absurd. Danny, the fisherman who never got skunked, swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker. Often, while we played pinochle, he would argue with me about the falseness of the Prophet Joseph Smith ('a con-man') about the hypocrisy of the Church ('it's just a social ladder') about the absurdity of a belief in God ("How can any intelligent Person believe in God in this day and age?') |