On telling the truth.............

     "Are you born again?" he asked, as we taxied down the runway.  He was rather prim and tense, maybe a little like David Eisenhower with a spastic colon.  I did not know how to answer for a moment.
     "Yes,"  I said, "I am."
     My friends like to tell each other that I am not really a born again Christian.  They think of me more along the lines of that old Jonathan Miller routine, where he said, "I'm not really a Jew - I'm Jew-ish."  They think I am Christian-ish.  But I'm not.  I'm just a bad Christian.  A bad born-again Christian.  And certainly, like the apostle Peter, I am capable of denying it, of presenting myself as a sort of leftist liberation-theology enthusiast and maybe sort of a vaguely Jesusy bon vivant.  But it's not true.  And I believe that when you get on a plane, if you start lying you are totally doomed.
     So I told the truth:  that I am a believer, a convert.  I'm probably about three months away from slapping an aluminum Jesus-fish on the back of my car, although I first want to see if the application or stickum in any way interferes with my lease agreement.  And believe me, all this boggles my mind. But it's true.  I could go to a gathering of foot-wash Baptists and, except for my dreadlocks, fit right in.  I would wash their feet;  I would let them wash mine.

-Anne Lamott,  Traveling Mercies:  Some Thoughts on Faith