Growing up in a secular world

I grew up in a secular household.  There was noting other worldy and growing up in a secular culture, I never expected retribution in another world –

Name calling when I was a child, 'ProtyProty on the Wall...whose the greatest of them all' were word barbs which were stocially shrugged off by me...for I was not a Protestant

And being called a' Catholic gick' was meaningless to me, as I was not a Catholic.  So these would be hurts were revisited on the name callers as real hurts, as the perpetrators skulked away when they saw my mixture of amusement and puzzlement.

I had been educated by my family which produced in me a stoicism that was paradoxical.

Insult are not injuries I had been told, words are not deeds, representations by others was not reality and art (religous) not life.

But as I grew up I found that, words, representations art and even insults were important in the realm of the real.

 Casuistry is an interesting word. It means reasoning used to resolve moral problems by extracting or extending theoretical rules from particular instances and applying these rules to new instances.  So this acceptance and non-acceptance in adult life is a piece of casuitry that is necessary in adult life to maintain some degree of balance.

The First Amendment come pretty close to this kind of thinking

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Although presented in a breezy manner on rereading this I find it more dizzying than persuasive.