Mission Central

When did we become a fit meal for missionary zeal? I ask this now, having been visited this week by two handsome, respectful, earnest young Latter Day Saints.

I wondered, later, if it didn’t have something to do with my driveway?

I know what it’s like to have a mission, of sorts, a door-to-door mission, and to be confronted by what might be a ready excuse: a long, winding driveway that disappears into the woods before it reaches a visible destination; a barking dog, or worse, signs warning thereof; and the lack of any apparent point of entrance or exit.

To the pollster, the census taker or even for your average campaign worker these traditional impediments are sufficient rationale for moving on to the next number on the list.

But these two young men – Johnny Cashed all in black – might have unconsciously considered my Bering Strait of a driveway an easy way to confirm, to themselves, their zeal. That is, this is not Botswana or Turkmenistan. In general, the audience here is, relatively speaking, understanding of their purpose. It’s easy to knock on the doors of the houses on the street, with their short little driveways and their obvious front doors. But to walk through the woods, over the hill, across an ice-bound creek, up an overgrown path to a darkly shingled gray gambrel, well, that’s dedication, faith and youthfulness, or a combination thereof!

But I’ve already strayed from my original point, or question. Why us? That is, apart from the challenge of my driveway, why the challenge of my town, my state, our East Coast intellectual position on the theo-political map.
Are we so wayward?
Are we so out of the way-ward?

Are we in some not altogether obvious manner depraved, or deprived?
Is it a general malaise that they seek to address?

Is it simply a matter of sect? Is it our sectual proclivities: the likelihood that, left to our own pseudo-religious devices, we would in all probability end up in a traditional steepled structure, surrounded by traditionally steepled people (here is the church, here is the steeple)? Are we on the list to be saved simply because of our Catholic-ness, our Presbyterianism, our Unitarianosity?
Is that really it?

I raised this question, sort of, with the two nice young men who came to my door. Actually, I asked if their appearance was reflective of a change in the world that I was not aware of.

I remembered, I told them, that when I was a boy you didn’t see men-in-black bicycling about American suburbia. In my old neighborhood (Colesville, in the White Oak section of the city of Silver Spring, in the state of Maryland) there was a Mormon Temple with golden spires and a sizable selection of Latter Day-ers. But,when the young men from that Temple missionaried, they did so overseas.

They didn’t answer the question, not directly. I don’t think they knew, or cared. They had a live one on the hook, at least metaphysically speaking, and were intent on getting in their pitch (though I barely gave them enough time to clear their throats).

I came to the door a bit breathless, having just come in from my driveway moments before they arrived, having just moments before that been pulverizing the larger driveway bergs that blocked passage, with a 30-pound sledge. My pants were spattered with pongy driveway water, my hair a bit wilder than usual. I may have startled them by my openness, my frenetic manner, and by how close I came to them, moving out onto our small, porch-like wooden front steps, closing the door behind me and immediately breaking into a mad ramble about the driveway, poetry, my lapsed but intransigent Catholicity and then, as I said, indirectly asking why they had been posted to Pilgrim land, and not a more traditional den of heathenism.
And then I gave them my bible – John Berrymans’ 67 Dream Songs.

No, I didn’t. But now I think that I might, that I could, maybe even that I should. I could make up my own book, and a summary of that book, with questions and answers about the origins of my agnosticism, and have it ready to give it out when missionaries knock. Certainly there can be nothing wrong with proselytizing those who come to my door.

But I’m not looking for an argument. And when I am visited by such as these – be they Java Witnesses, Jack Conwayites, or Latter Day Country Western singers, I am almost always polite, deferential, complimentary.

God, they were nice young men: healthy and upright, well dressed and well spoken, and not at all zealous in their manner.

I couldn’t help but love their obvious goodness. I loved their idealism, too.

I felt a little like the witch living in the house made out of candy. They were so young and sincere and good that I, by comparison, felt a bit wicked, a bit dangerous (a bit envious, too).

I wished, for a moment, that I were so young and bright and energetic.

I wished, at that moment, that everyone should have a chance at their age, to work for some idealistic goal – perhaps not as lofty as the salvation of souls, but in that direction.

We need to have our growth directed at the earliest possible age toward the welfare of others so that, when the other tropisms we encounter begin to yank us in more selfish directions we will know, or feel, or have at least a vague remembrance that our roots were once grounded in concern for humanity.

Maybe the presence of these young men in our town is simply a sign of the abundance of idealism, still out there.

Perhaps Mormons are simply multiplying at a rate sufficient to have enough to go around, enough for each poor country abroad and for each of our isolated, suburban, sometimes soul-less little towns as well.

When I finally shut up they said what they needed to say and went on their way, though first gifting me with a densely worded book, and a pamphlet summarizing the book.

I told them their gospel was, perhaps, wasted on me, but they insisted I keep it, said they had plenty.

As they navigated their way out, I called out a friendly warning. Be careful, I said, many a missionary has come up my driveway and lost sight of the road. It has subtle twists and turns, and the branches from the encroaching trees are known to consume an occasional side-view mirror. And then there are the thorns, like tiny serrated teeth along lengths of tangled, wispy, evergreen vines, almost invisible, dangling from the trees, eager to nibble at the apple of a rosy cheek, or pluck the sleep from the folds of an unsuspecting eye.