The Game of Revelations Yugena Gunawardena

I walked past a building labeled “prayer room” and knew I did not fit in. A Buddhist boy playing basketball in a Christian basketball league, I found myself walking through a parochial school on a Saturday in search of a gym.

I ambled through two doors emblazoned with a maroon cross and entered into something resembling more of a church than a basketball court. Red, blue, and yellow light entered the building through the stained glass windows that adorned the walls and came together to illuminate the image of what looked like a bible at center court. I was lost. Buddhist temples, which I didn’t even attend regularly, were much simpler: merely rooms with a statue of the Buddha centered at one end. Here in this ominous gym, it was as if God himself was in attendance. I was a fifth grader who went to a school where nobody seemed to be overly involved with religion at all. I wasn’t just blind to it; I was genuinely scared. I was scared of the symbols, I was scared of the institution, I was scared of the people. As my teammates and I finished our warm-up drills, we were called to center court to gather around the outer edge of the bible that glistened before us on the floor. I saw parents, I saw coaches, I saw not only members of...