Theology and Infatuation

[NOTE: While I have been a member of Jodo Shin churches for over 13 years, I was raised distinctly without religion - more specifically, beyond the reach of Christendom, in a more secular - even agnostic? - idiom. The reason? Both of my grandfathers left their respective parishes: my paternal was lapsed with no intention of returning, while my mother's father Robert was a legal apostate, and effectively petitioned (however that works) to sort of excommunicate himself, mainly on behalf of his newborn baby daughter, my mother, Constance. I am a syncretist, an animist, a humanist, and a lackadaisical scholar. This informs the stabs at erudition betrayed in these lines. It is a lovelorn confessional, yet dedicated to the one and only Tori Amos.]