Saturday without the kids. On tap – multiple large projects. Having arisen at seven, I already felt a twinge of panic as it felt like I was already behind.
First, cleaning out the car. Mind you, the car hadn’t been cleaned out since last fall, before the snow fell. It was awful – toys and paper bags with French fries that weren’t quite finished, shoes and socks and homework and drink holders with a thick layer of unidentifiable goo in the bottom.
It was well over an hour’s work on a surprisingly warm morning. Keeping Midwest Magic Cleaning on as my soundtrack, I managed to clean things out enough the difference between before and after was amazing.
Calling it “good enough”, even without working on the cargo area, I went back into the house to get some water and get myself organized before starting the next project – mowing both in front and behind the house. Not only that, but I needed to get gas from the gas station for the lawn mower.
It had been a conscious choice to wear some of my rattiest attire for the day. Both my t-shirt and pants had likely celebrated a decade in my house, and both had the scars to show it. But when the plan for the day involves crawling around a vehicle where one is likely to end up with melted Valentine’s chocolate on one’s attire, and then having the area around one’s feet colored green, it seemed like a smart decision.
As luck would have it, something went goofy again – although I don’t quite remember, I suspect it was looking for the car keys that I *just had* while I was cleaning the car – and while I was trying to collect the pieces of my scattered mind along with the keys, somebody rang the doorbell.
This is not necessarily an uncommon thing, but it’s almost always somebody who wants to sell me something – insect treatment, new windows, a bridge to nowhere – and had the front door not been sitting ajar behind the glass storm door, I might ducked down to pretend I wasn’t available, despite the open garage door and row of half-filled plastic water bottles pulled from the car now sitting in the driveway attesting to the fact that somebody was around just minutes ago. I got a quick glimpse of who was on the other side of the storm door.
Men in suits. “Probably Mormons,” I thought. And then a thought from almost nowhere – “Talk to them”.
Maybe it was just insanity, but I went to the door and started talking with them. No, they weren’t Mormons. They were Jehovah’s Witnesses. Three of them – and older gentleman, a young man whom I would guess to be in his 20s, and a boy of about five. All three were dressed as if they were going to church in the 1960s; the little boy was in “church clothes” but not a suit, but the two men were in suits.
It was a surprisingly pleasant chat. What was incredibly interesting was that the older gentleman started talking about increasing degeneracy in the world, and I said he didn’t need to tell me about it, as I grew up in Chicago. He asked where, and I told him, and it turns out that for a long time, he lived about four streets over, and he attended the same high school a couple of my aunts did. Talk about a small world!
I let them know that I’m an Orthodox Christian, and a little bit of why. I think that they were impressed that I could quote things out of the Bible. The older gentleman did most of the talking. I don’t think he’s the type whose mind would ever be changed about being a Jehovah’s Witness. As the years go by, it seems like I feel the need far less to convince anybody of anything. I’ve learned that if I want to be convincing, I have to demonstrate the truth of my conviction. That takes time to cultivate.
We could, however, have a conversation and talk to each other as real people. I remember, too, a blogger once saying that with debates, the object is often not to try to convince your opponent, but to put out a case where other people listening can understand your point. I don’t know, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this was the case with the younger man there, that by respectfully talking with his dad, he was actually hearing the things I had to say.
The funny thing is, once they were gone, I drove down to the gas station about a half mile from where I live. Not only did I see one of my license plate “signs”, but this song came on the radio. (Granted it was the Beatles’ station, but still…)
This comes off the only Paul McCartney album I own (apart from the classical album “Standing Stone”), and the familiar lyrics hit me before they were sung:
Someone's knocking at the door
Somebody's ringing the bell
Someone's knocking at the door
Somebody's ringing the bell
Do me a favor
Open the door
And let 'em in...
Sure, it might all be coincidence, and I might be prone to rambling on about nothing, but as much as we have to guard ourselves from many destructive ideas and philosophies, it just seems as though if we’re going to ask people to reconsider things near and dear to their hearts that we actually see and treat them as people face to face.
Breath of Hallelujah 