Read This I Believe: Life Lessons for Free Online

hitting walls that people ask me about my home situation. Nine months ago, I broke my leg and ankle. I healed fast, but the risk remains. Next time I might not.
    Climbing requires a cold-blooded decision to live. If I am inattentive or careless, I will fall. Every time I climb at the gym or rope up for a route outside or go bouldering—which is climbing without a rope, and it is often more dangerous—I am taking a risk. And I am committing to staying alive.
    Now, I believe in climbing, in not jumping. Jumping would have been easy—just step over the bridge railing and let go. Climbing is harder but worth it. I believe that deciding to live was the right decision.
    There’s no way to describe the terrible darkness of depression in a way that nondepressed people can understand. Now, I’m less focused on the darkness. Instead, I think about the joy I feel in conquering it and the tool I used.
    I am a climber, and I am alive.
    Kij Johnson is a writer whose fiction has won the Nebula Award and the World Fantasy Award, and she has been nominated for the Hugo Award. She lives in North Carolina and climbs wherever and whenever she can. Ms. Johnson is at work on a series of essays about climbing.

Walking in the Light

    Paul Thorn
    I don’t want to be a God-fearing man. I believe in religion without fear.
    I grew up in a Pentecostal-type faith in northeast Mississippi called the Church of God of Prophecy, where my father was the pastor. At the age of twelve, I was sent to a summer Bible camp where fear was the motivation for belief. One night the counselors staged a Russian takeover of the camp, simulating the assassination of our camp director. Real shotgun blasts scared us all to our knees, and we begged God for salvation.
    At the age of seventeen, I was disfellowshipped from my church for having premarital sex with my girlfriend. Since my father was the pastor, a meeting was arranged with me, my dad, and my Sunday school teacher. I was given two options: stand and confess my sins in front of the congregation and be forgiven or continue my evil ways and no longer be in the club. I chose to be disfellowshipped and became officially unaffiliated with the church.
    I moved out of the parsonage, got a job in a furniture factory, and bought a used mobile home for $6,000. People from the church would come by my trailer from time to time to tell me they were still praying for me and that they hoped I would come back to Jesus before I wound up in hell. I just stared at the ground the way you would with a schoolyard bully and hoped they’d go away.
    As the years passed by, opportunity took me all over the United States and to other countries as well. I saw churches everywhere I went, and I noticed something I’d never seen before. I met people who didn’t pray to Jesus. You have to understand, where I come from the people who tried to teach me about God by using fear also kept me from learning about other paths to God. Any variation was described as a trick of the devil.
    But I saw good, sincere Muslims, Buddhists, and Jews all walking in the light—as they knew it. I started to believe that no one is capable of knowing God’s specific identity, so I decided to seek him down my own path, because I believe that’s what he wants me to do. I talk to him daily. He never says anything back, but I know he’s listening. I thank him for my family and friends, and I thank him for the good life I have. I still have problems like anyone else, but overall there’s peace in my heart.
    The people who were trying to get me to God used fear and intimidation like a hammer, beating into submission anyone who dared to question their brand of absolute truth.
    The higher power I now pray to gives me love, joy, and comfort. And I’m not afraid of him. I had to break away from the God I was supposed to believe in to find the God I could believe in.
    Singer-songwriter Paul Thorn was born in Wisconsin and