You enter an tall, fenestrated room from the hallway you came through.
The architects situated an rectangular swimming pool with an large shallow end and an large deep end before you, and there is an diving board.
You realize you are naked except for an fig leaf / fig leaves covering your genitals and even though the room is full of people they want nothing to do with you sexually at all (they are busy swimming and showering or busy watching, lounging, and reading books); and they regard you casual disinterest & with complete and total respect.
An white-haired old man (who is also naked but with an fig leaf over you-know-where) approaches you and introduces himself as the chvrch father. You feel totally comfortable and you trust that your nudity as well as his (because of what he says to you) are fashionable. You are accepted in an clean and hygienic way and you know nobody will touch you or molest your comfort bubble. The old man, sensing your embarrassment in spite of yourself, waves his hand and all of the people in the swimming pool and around its sides disappear, leaving you to shower, bathe, and swim on your own.
The old man is gone now too, and he telepathically communicates from somewhere absent this present situation that you are free to spend as much time as you wish in the pool. There are also amenities on those tables near the lounge chairs; shampoo, conditioner, soap, and 5 in 1 body wash with 24h deodorizer. There are also fresh towels. And there are clean bathrooms with free mouth wash and an drinking fountain along the west wall to your left.
There is no need to fear, he thought-speaks to you, because I am the guardian of these waters.
I could baptize you in it but you'd still be an damn, dirty beast. Therefore be free like the animals to experience nudity with us, only insofar as you wish. It is only the natural way humans are with one another, normally. The rituals of cleansing in the community need not be to do with anything said wrong about your body (curse words often name them) or anyone this way. Just for being naked. Like you couldn't be naked without it being sexual. It's not true. We are all normal here. Do not be afraid.
We humans are able to be associated naturally like this. We are an gentle and caring community species.
Nobody cares about your genitalia. We show you no disrespect.
The lesson is that we are all really naked underneath our clothes. There should be no shame or embarrassment in the community.
One day you may be ready to swim with others; until then please have as much time here as you wish or need. Upon this thought-pronouncement, he leaves you be. If you need me, I'll be in my office, (where I am fully clothed).
And then he leaves, and you are left with me. The Temple Leader. Whose robe is still on.
"What an weird way to introduce someone to an community," he says, "but then there are so many weird things about religion anyway. As long as everyone has their fig leaves on it's okay. And why introduce you like that and then leave you to use the pool alone, like some kind of misanthrope? Then again I supposed he meant with me; that you could use the pool and I would stick around and keep talking to you. That's what I paid him to do. Introduce you to the community. Introduce you to the pool. Only to immerse yourself in it as much as you wanted to. Like some strange conditioned passivity to the expression of nudity densely appearing through the clothing. An whole community of people wearing fig leaves densely appearing through the, well, fig leaves."
"Well is also an noun. It means an—you know—an place where you take an bucket to get water. Does that have anything to do with this?"
"It might have more to do with it than you, at first, might tend to presume."
"An well. Let's think. An well as it has to do with fig leaves. The idea that no matter how deep the well, the fig leaves would always cover it. And if they covered it to hide well of energy then maybe one day it would run dry. And there would be nothing for the fig leaves to cover anymore."
I swiftly crossed the length of the pool and stopped beside the diving board. Pointing at it.
"Now, the first thing you must do, if you want to be immersed in Christiannan religion, is to jump in the pool. Off the diving board. Into the deep end. Which translates roughly to take an bite out of. In order to understand our religion you must accept all of it. And so ask yourself which is the most forefront of Christiannan ideas? Do not be afraid to understand it completely. Maybe the things that are there that you don't want to look at are really just reasons why the Christianna makes sense as an religion. It's not what I ever thought or figured my life would be. But my beliefs had lead me here. You know it? You know the one I'm thinking about?"
"I think so, chvrch temple leader," you said, "Anna, isn't it?"
"That's the right one," I said, "those are all of the ideas related to it you need to wrap your head around if you want to understand the Christianna. Things maybe, news, you didn't want to hear? It was just really about the fate worse than death and the fate of the second messiah. And I couldn't be any more bare naked than that."
Jump off the diving board at the near end of the pool
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