DOCTOR- Agnes of God (John Peilmeier)

There was a lynching mob that came before a judge who accused them of hanging a man without a fair and objective trial. "Oh, your Honor," the leader said, "we listened very fairly and objectively to every word he had to say. Then we hung the son of a bitch." I wanted to maintain my objectivity, but Mother Miriam wouldn't believe that. Oh, she couldn't have known about Marie, but she must have suspected something. Marie was my younger sister, who decided she had a vocation to the convent when she was fifteen. So my mother sent her off without a second thought, and I never saw her again. I received a message late one night that Marie had died of acute, and unattended, appendicitis because her Mother Superior wouldn't send her to a hospital. (She laughs.) Well, no, I guess at heart I couldn't be very fair and objective, could I? But I tried. I remember waiting to view Marie's body in a little convent room, and staring at those spotless walls and floors and thinking, my God, what a metaphor for their minds. And that's when I realized that my religion, my Christ, is this. The mind. Everything I do not understand in this world is contained in these few cubic inches. Within this shell of skin and bone and blood I have the secret to everything. I look at a tree and I think, isn't it wonderful that I have created something so green. God isn't out there. He's in here. God is you. Or rather you are God. Mother Miriam couldn't understand that, of course.