Someone's knocking on my door.
Who would be knocking on my door on the 4th of July?
I open the door and there stands Grace.
She has her bible open and a stack of "Watchtowers" - she is a member of a particular demographic of Jehovah's Witnesses: usually African-American, always dressed up, flaunting the fact that they don't celebrate holidays by "witnessing" to you on your day off, excellent scholars, articulate, upright, law abiding, moderately educated (usually by kinship - "I have a nephew who's a Physicist, our deacon is a Doctor,..."), polite and extremely clean. I look up the street and I can see the whole squad, maybe three more groups, spread out over the area, doing a house to house, starched, pressed, and creased.
opening - "Do I want to know what's wrong with the world today?"
"Yes, I do.....
But, I don't believe in a truth that depends on the printing press. I think the truth is everywhere, in all experience, all thought, all imaginings, all hopes, all things, everywhere."
Grace and I argue for a bit (it's in the rules). I can't help noticing her eyes. She has those pale blue eyes that you see sometimes in an African-American, shimmering ice blue eyes that you can see in your mind from then on.
We argue some more: "But it's been proven that Jesus actually existed."
"But it's been proven that there need not be such a thing as the past."
etc.
I ask the woman with her, "Do you believe in a truth that can only be gotten if you can read, or if someone can read to you? Does that make sense to you?" She just smiles.
Grace is pointing to something in the bible: "word of god, word of god, so-and-so said, so-and-so wrote, ......"
I tell Grace about the truth I hear in Miles Davis, or Coltrane, or in math, or computer science or birds. How about Beethoven believing that god spoke in music?
She knows all about that. (They always do. It's very important to them to know all of the counters to their arguments. They believe their logic to be impeccable and so their knowledge of the world must be "impeccable". She tells me she met Duke Ellington, and heard Art Tatum play when she lived in New York. She doesn't want to, but she doesn't really mind my point of view, we're starting to warm up to each other.
I introduce myself and ask her name. "Grace, I'm 82, and this is my daughter Pam" - Pam is standing out on the sidewalk and is probably in her 50's, Grace is on my porch.
I ask Pam, so do you like Duke Ellington?
Grace waves me off, "she doesn't understand what you're saying, a problem at child birth." I smile at Pam and now I recognize a child's smile.
I love Grace and all of her hard working buddies, and I think that even though they are insanely wrong, they deserve all those Watchtower things they want: The 144,000 , Armageddon, a god who takes being called by his "right name" very seriously, the whole thing; give it to them. Bless their hearts, there are plenty of universes. The things that draw them there justify the hypocrisy and the irony.
Pam and I smile in each other. She is such a sweetie!
To her, it's all nonsense, she just wants to go, and tugs on Grace's blouse.
