I just signed up to have Mormon missionaries visit me at home

[© tweed]

and give me the Book of Mormon.  I figured they would just mail it to me for free but now it says local missionaries will contact me within a few days and set up a house visit and give me the book by hand.  should be interesting.

[© tweed]

and give me the Book of Mormon.  I figured they would just mail it to me for free but now it says local missionaries will contact me within a few days and set up a house visit and give me the book by hand.  should be interesting.

Will you offer them PBRs?

no, but I decided on my first gimmick a few moments ago.  I'll have a pot of coffee on when they come in and promptly offer it to them.

[© tweed]

and give me the Book of Mormon.  I figured they would just mail it to me for free but now it says local missionaries will contact me within a few days and set up a house visit and give me the book by hand.  should be interesting.

Will you offer them PBRs?

What are PBRs?

seriously dude?

[© tweed]

Pabst Blue Ribbon, a cheap American lager that has had a resurgence in the past handful of years mainly on the backs of people of my demographic (people will associate it with 'hipsters' but it's broader than that and hipster verges on being a meaningless term regardless).

[© tweed]

I have a tentative appt for 230 on Saturday.  I also have a "date" (ie, appointment with sexually attractive female) scheduled for late Saturday afternoon, so.  something may have to give.  and wouldn't want the first date to be, "yo, I am having LDS missionaries over, you want to just have me make coffee and save the 80 cents off of retail" kinda deal.

[© tweed]

"we're excited to meet ya" on a Voicemail.  she sounds sweet.  sorry guys I don't think I'm going to offer her coffee or beer or anything, I'd feel very guilty.  I may try to have sex with her though.

[© tweed]

well, Brothers, it happened.  they were here for about an hour, I just kicked them out.

I'm sorry to report to you fellas that I didn't play any practical jokes... no, I even went to the trouble of removing the boxes of Corona Light and Miller High Life that were scattered on the floor, and (gasp) put the Cusinart 4-cup coffee machine back in the cupboard.  Tweed, respectful?  ha!

well, yes, I guess I was.  there were three of them.  two were proper missionaries and one a Cornell student that just tags along on her free time.  from here on in I'll drop my own voice and just try to report events as best I can say they happened.

__


they came in the door and I offered them seats.  they were a bit awkward, and I'm sure I was too.  all three were women, age 19-22.  one was good looking, we'll get to that later.  so, I offered them seats, and they decided to cram onto my two-seater couch rather than risk the torn-up chair with an MLB pillow on it for a backrest.

we opened with a prayer.  I bowed my head properly.  we're glad we could be here with David tonight in Ithaca, bless him, etc.  and then we got on with it.  they asked me the following:

what led me to request a Book of Mormon?
what was my religious background (if any)?
have I had any moments particularly of spiritual inclination? (later defined as a sense of spiritual peace, rather than an emotional high, after conversation)
do I believe it is possible to attain a sense of spiritual certainty?


I must toot my own horn here for a bit.  I positively 'wowed' them with my knowledge of Mormon theology... though I'm sure it is but cursory in the presence of the three devotees, my days ostensibly wasted on Wikipedia and in Barnes & Noble apparently are good for a bit of backdoor shock value.  the moment came as I asked a question that went something like "so after the Lamanites slayed the last of the Nephites, there was no contact between God and the people of Earth until Joseph Smith 1200 years later?'  and they were like wtf, who are you.  of course in a nice way, they were nice people.


ok I'll write part two in a bit.  feel free to ask questions or offer comments as I sip on my Corona Light and get this thread back on track, and also anger Snowstalker by stoking the searing flames of the Forum's continuing obsession with the LDS holy Fire.

[© tweed]

Part II.


I'm fully addicted to this place.  fully admit it, no qualms, nothing.  I'm more yours than you are mine.  but going through that, there's a fundamental truth, that ascribes me into my own Atlas experience: you are, my diary of sorts.


so what is pain?  is pain something that we convince ourselves that we feel, or is it real?  because, look, I understand how to minimize my pain.  and I've been to the therapy sessions, and I've seen the results.  but instead of the momentum finding a way to snowball, as the speed times time formula or whatever it is would suggest, oh no, it... the negativity creeps up.  it's lurking, and I can beat it back for 24, 48 hours on a good run, but then it is BOOM! and I just crave it.  don't crave the negativity per se, no, just the emotional potency of it.  I'd take positive, happy emotional potency if it existed, but I have this scary feeling that it doesn't, that only through drugs and their likeness have I accustomed myself to that search for emotional-psychic high, a spiritually dangerous thing to do to oneself.

so, do I need religion?  do I need Joseph Smith?  "do I need love or just a blowjob", as Johnny Hobo once put it.  well, I'd like both.  I'd like cake, and eat the cake too, and not just eat the cake too, but to eat it without the carbohydrate content, so I could be slim, looking at cake, and having ate it, and married, and happy.  but our human minds are gifted with this stupid capability to fantasize, and the reality never quite seems to catch up with the fantasy.


part III later.

[© tweed]

turns out my therapist is a lapsed Mormon who spent two years as a missionary in Chile.  small world.

[© tweed]

I'll write part three today.  due to the popular demand.  usually I hardly ever finish what I start, but this will be an exception.  it's on my official list of things to do today along with reading the Book of Mormon, going to a 1pm appointment, and rededicating myself to health.

[© tweed]

As I mentioned, one of the three was good-looking.  She had blond hair, cut to shoulder length (I wonder if they have a restriction to this effect)… she was also endowed with deep, big, blue eyes, which fixated on me without fail (as per her LDS missionary training in Provo, I would later learn from my lapsed Mormon therapist) as she recounted her testimony.  Draping her lively face were thick-rimmed, large-lensed, even ‘hipsterish’ glasses, a small concession to modernity amid the fit-for-the-19th-Century getup.  The attire made it difficult to tell what she was carrying in the important areas: tits, ass, and so on, and I suppose that’s the entire point.

Despite any serious visual encouragement, as she continued her testimony, my mind started wandering.  Not in the fantasizing-about-having-sex with her sort of way, though, admittedly, there was a bit of that.  Most of the time, though, my mind went far from the room, even far away from her.  The vision had me somewhere in Utah… not Provo, I wouldn’t go that crazy, but it did seem to be a rural area.  Hopefully within reasonable driving distance of Salt Lake City so I could get a touch of what I’d be missing out on when I started to crave it.

So there I was, deep in the corners of my own mind, married to Sister Smith, at the very reasonable Mormon age of 22, holding a job as a human resource manager for some mid-sized firm.  (My fantasies are always well-thought out, making concessions to the Real: my earning power in the mountain West is sure to dwarf what it would be in my native tri-State area).

Oh, Lord! The novelty of my Ivy League degree amidst the sea of BYU and Utah State grads.  And how I would impress Sister Smith’s mother, I swear I would… in a month I could master enough LDS theology and history to convince them all of my worthiness of Latter-Day Sainthood.  They’d be convinced of how curious and learned I am just by my reading of mainstream biographies of George Washington and inane American exceptionalist histories of the Civil War.  How easy it would all be!  And when I needed my fix I could always sneak onto the Atlas and hunt-and-peck my way towards an impassioned defense of Lenin, or head into Salt Lake proper and catch a show or an indie film, or even StubHub my way into seats when the Clippers come to town two or three times a year.  I’d have my outlets!

And what makes this fantasy stick, is that it’s not impossible.  It’s not too far from the real.  I could never believe in my heart that God talked to Joseph Smith Jr. on that dark 1823 night, I could never write an archaeological dissertation feigning to prove the historicity of the Nephites.  But is this really the question, are the critics putting the cart before the horse?  Religion and God are there to serve us, to give us comfort in this otherwise cold, harsh, dark alley.  And while my fantasy is sure to be flawed, idealized, whatever, it’s not too far from a truth that repeats itself countless times over, and is repeating as we speak.  All I have to believe is that the whole package is a “spiritually correct analog”, or even just a “spiritually useful analog”, and head on my merry way to the snow-capped pastures.




Part 4 will contain a more dispassionate recounting of the events that I remember about the trip and have not yet covered.

[© tweed]

I didn't know Naso taught courses in writing style.

that doesn't even vaguely resemble anything Naso would write.

[© tweed]

at the end, we prayed.  they wanted me to lead the prayer.  I declined.  "I'd rather not".  I totally would rather not.  what the  would I say?  what would I say?  in that moment where the dishonest met the honest, the line blurred, the eternal transposed itself?  I won't lie, I felt a tingle, when they expressed their care for me the first time.  so what would I say?  did I care about them?  do I care about them?  am I just a cynical bitch?  let me give it a shot.  (ftr I have Christian-ish music playing as I write this.)

'dear God, reveal yourself to me.  I'm lost, I'm tired.  I have that deep, spiritual tiredness and nothing works.  nothing works anymore.  thank you for sending these people to me: I won't question their motives, it's not my place to judge, as Your son once said, at least I think he said.  not eloquent, not rehearsed, just me.  You're supposed to have made me, and love me as I am, so I'll hold You to it.  Amen.'

and they've had batted an eye or two, nothing more.  and they're limited.  and they're idiots, if we're to carry it a bit further.  and maybe you the reader sense a 'but', an inflection point, coming up here.  the reason?  Tweed can't write a thought without giving the two sides of it.  without counterposing the two possibilities, secretly hedging his position, trying to cloak it in his skill with words.

but there's only so much trickery.  you can trick men.  into Ivy League degrees.  into law school acceptance.  into paying for your food and drink.  into having sex with you.  but! and here it is.  you can't trick God.  and following from that.  you can't trick yourself into a sense of spiritual certainty.  and here it is.  if I die tonight I'm scared, scared to death, and it goes on.

[© tweed]

I mean to make it official.  alcohol does not work for me anymore.  coffee and energy drinks only drive me to alcohol.  I have read enough, I know enough to make it true.  I plan to go to service on Sunday.  I consider myself a member of the Latter-day Saint movement: colloquially, a Mormon.

[© tweed]

I do still have my Lenin shirt (two of them actually -- the more incendiary of the two has a big portrait of Lenin on the front with 'WWLD?' in bold caps under his face. no, I'm not going to wear that)... the student branch of Ithaca LDS meets at 9am Sunday, now I just need to find a ride.

[© tweed]

If you're for real about this, you might want to try finding a Community of Christ near you; they might be more to your taste ideologically.  Congrats!  If you're not for real about this, have you considered going into writing?  Your style isn't quite the kind that I go for, but you have chops.

while I would very probably 'fit better' with RLDS, I choose LDS as it is the most important, if you will, and therefore viewed as the inheritor of the latter day saint tradition.  the influence I can have through there is therefore greatest. 

as for the last bit, I do appreciate the compliment, but see no incompatibility with being 'for real' and continuing to write... I would even be critical of the idea it is necessarily clear that, first of all, even if all the words I've written are to be taken at face value, I am 'for real' about conversion, and, second, critical of the idea that I necessarily must know myself whether or not I am 'for real'.

[© tweed]

no.  no ride.  my friend says he will go with me to the 9am student service next Sunday, and I'll do what I can to hold him to it.  he is the most dependable friend I have up here, not prone to flake, so it seems likely to happen.

also, it's a Temple, BRTD, get it right.

[© tweed]

well that sucks.  the missionaries didn't give me any of that info.