Random excerpts & interludes, part II

The woman at my door

I peep through the curtains. Pulled to the side just enough to squint through and down onto the drive.

A middle-aged woman quickly sweeps her well-kempt blonde hair back and rolls her shoulders. Just enough to straighten the top of her blouse and coat.

I sigh as the realization of her purpose resonates through me.

She's a door-to-door religious saleswoman selling her faithful wares.

How do I know this?

How do I arrive at such a point of pin-head accurate clarity about her reason for being on my front door step, after only the briefest of glimpses?

The way she's dressed.

Her hasty door step preparation.

The way she holds herself.

Her replete handbag hung off of her left shoulder.

And last but not least, the fact that I never heard the gate she had to pass through to get to my door.

A sure sign of unwelcome stealth.

I'm actually quite busy, but this could be a good chance to get into the mind of such people and see just what it is that motivates them.

I suspect many things, and many of my theories have proven to be correct, but this is my chance to gather empirical evidence -- as it were -- from one of the many 'client facing' operatives who ply their trade from house to house.

I appear at the door, standing there with the door just ajar, holding my dog back with my left foot, with only the cursory and customary sniffs of the air as she attempts to satisfy her canine curiosity.

The woman smiles warmly, but falsely.

She is wearing a very strong but not unpleasant perfume, which I'm sure is all part of the presentation.

Like most people that come to my door, when I answer, they look straight to my feet.

Much of my day at home is spent barefoot. I have no need of slippers or socks or other such things.

This distracts her momentarily, but she recovers enough of her faculties to begin with her patter.

I allow her to spew forth her spiritual sales spiel. I do not smile and do not unfold my arms.

I lean against the frame of the door. I do not invite her in and I maintain my austere demeanor.

I choose to make her work for my time.

When the moment arrives and mood takes me and when my conceit gets the better of my fairer, wiser self, I made my beliefs very clear to her.

I have chosen to follow the unimpeachable path of logic, I proclaim in so many round, clear words, careful to speak slowly and thoughtfully.

Slowly enough to make it clear I'm not the ordinary householder she would come up against in her daily travels. But not too slowly as to appear patronizing. A self-indulgence of the English, or so I'm told.

"I'm an evolutionist, not a creationist", I add.

This she understood and leapt upon with glee as she thumbed instinctively to a page in the bible held loosely in her left hand.

Am I so predictable?

Probably not. Maybe I skipped a few of regular stages of the conversation, but her method is to her so well known, she was able to meet me there.

She read one passage after another and I quickly returned with an instant dismissal in each case, which while catching her off guard for a moment, she interpreted as a challenge. Or misinterpreted, rather.

I had arrived at a clear grasp the woman quite quickly. She was a foot soldier. The woman in the field.

I tried to explain to her the elementary failings of her unfocused and waisted belief, but she wasn't to be budged.

Each and every time I pointed out the child-like simplicity of all religion, not just her christian faith, she repeatedly saw this as a chance to dip into her now dog-eared and clearly well-read bible.

Inside, I sigh.

I indulge my cruelty: "I'm not at all religious, but I am a very spiritual person."

Her eyes glaze over as she attempts to process what to her at least is a complete and utter contradiction in terms.

To the majority of the religious, they believe that they are the curators and the owners of spiritualism, and such things are merely an extension of religion, rather than being separate to.

She stutters for a moment and then mentally scrambles to find some relevant passage from the bible that might head me off at the theological pass. But I stymie her attempts with curt, simple and withering rebuttals.

I've been here before, only most other times, these exchanges become charged and angry because I will neither concede ground nor accept what is to me unacceptable.

I sense she feels I am being truly dismissive of her faith and she asks if I have ever read the bible.

I shake my head. But that is a lie. I have attempted to read the bible on more than one occasion, but I find myself either frustrated by the impenetrable structure or word use, or offended by the unrelenting arrogance.

To a larger degree, I am being truly dismissive of her faith, but I then point out to her that to dismiss the bible, or indeed any religious works in their entirety would be to dismiss the efforts of a great many people.

That would be foolish. As a model of moral & ethical governance, most religions at the very least form a working template.

For me, questions are healthy. Questioning things is an integral part of what I do. For every problem, I try to find at least three viable, efficient solutions.

So if I can offer any advice to anyone, then that would be to question everything you're not sure about. Be veracious and unrelenting in your pursuit of the facts. Accept no halve-truths and after all of this, if the bearer of the facts imparts to you with visible angst and resignation, then you've probably reached your goal.

To this woman, her belief is such that she believes her religion is the panacea to all questions. To me, religion is a veneer of conformity and merely a platform for yet more questions, most of which are either entirely answerable or so withdrawn into their own hand-me-down dogma as to be a contrivance and nothing more.

I smile. I make my excuses and we part company.

She quickly dips into her handbag for some leaflet. A picture of some guy in a christmas sweater leafing through the bible with a look a pretentious, staged earnest adorned the cover.

I politely take the leaflet, smile and I close the door.

I lock the door, jog upstairs and into my room.

I throw the leaflet into a corner of the room. Into and amongst the pile of letters and various unsolicited correspondence I receive over the course of the day.

I return to work...