The first conviction - the one about not drinking beer - came to me in a painless way during a meeting of our 5th- or 6th-grade fellowship group. I can't remember how old we were, but I was deeply infatuated with a young girl by the name of Annette. And as we played games and did our scripture lesson, I kept my eyes on Annette. Wherever she went, my eyes followed. And when the pastor of our church called us together for prayer, I jumped up beside Annette, knowing the pastor was going to ask us to join hands. And he did. It was at that moment the preacher commenced to pray and Annette and I commenced to giggle.

Suddenly the prayer stopped and the reverend looked at me and said, "I will not have you laughing while we try to speak with our Lord. Please leave the prayer circle."

Of course, I did leave, and I never came back to pray with those Christians again. I did not start praying again until many years later, after I had switched to another denomination and had my giggling under control. And Annette? She and I never got a romance moving.

The beer admonition came just before the prayer giggle. Our teacher, the reverend's wife, brought us little white cards that contained a pledge - I promise to never let alcoholic beverages touch my lips, or something like that. I recall the pledge cards came from the Women's Christian Temperance Union, an organization dedicated to personal prohibition that has now passed from the religious scene.

I sat in the classroom circle thinking about my daddy, who occasionally had a bottle of beer on a Saturday afternoon and who would sometimes drink off the top and fill the beer bottle with straight 180 proof alcohol - fairly potent stuff. But being an observant child, I quickly noticed that all the other children in the class were signing the pledge cards. I observed especially that Annette was signing hers without hesitation, and that prompted me to sign my name and underline it.

There were times after that I wondered what would happen if I ever tasted a beer as my dear daddy had so often done. And the conclusion was that my soul would be skinned and fried forever.

So there I was, set adrift at the age of 11 with a simple understanding of the Christian faith: don't drink alcohol and don't laugh during prayers, then you'll be OK with Jesus.

And for a couple of years, the Christian religion was actually that simple. But then the real world began to seep into my life a little at a time. I discovered other admonitions about how boys relate to girls and how we relate to our neighbor's property and how we deal with honesty. The list seemed to grow by the day.

This is one reason I say, with conviction, that after the age of 11, my life began a downward spiral that has never ceased.

But I am now a confessed and contrite man. Now I fully expect that every day my life will be on the upswing, and when it isn't, I laugh with the saints. And the saints were good laughers, I believe, because they had the secret figured out.

They knew it wasn't what a person did that made the difference, but what a person believed. Because the saints tell us, the good life is about hope - that vague concept that keeps us moving forward even when everything tells us to give up.

I hear people talking doom. I hear all the predictions that our youth are going to hell. I hear the warnings, the fortune-telling and the arrogantly conceived scenarios for our future. Yes, we have serious problems. Every generation has had serious problems. But the human spirit lives in hope, and that makes all the difference. If we believed those who preach doom, our world would have bitten the dust a long time ago. But there are always some people who can look beyond the obvious and find a new path.

Those unfortunate people, who got stuck at age 11 and continue to believe life is simple with only one or two guiding principles, always will be around.

All the more reason for some of us to move beyond a child's understanding and find hope.

Clark D. Morphew