I have to give these guys credit, the other Patrick is a tall 40 something, gruff looking guy, who is more out and proud than Paul Osborne with a bottle of whiskey in him.[
] So, in addition to a guy wearing dangly earrings and bright pink and blue nail polish, these young righteous men were strolling into a tobacco zone to talk to a cynical post-hipster crank who was dressed like a dock worker smoking a pipe. If that’s not a proper mission field, I don’t know what is.I can imagine these fellas felt emboldened to approach, because the pair and I had numerous encounters around campus. Those encounters usually involved me taking snapshots of them and posting it on Face book (I used to provide snap shots of the campus zeitgeist, but the practice has waned of late), and the exchange of a few but brief pleasantries.
Now my policy is usually not to engage missionaries, I’m not the drone they are looking for [
], I figure these guys are looking for people who are sincerely considering joining the church, and I’m very far from that place, so why waste their time? Also, missionaries tend to be on the green side, and it usually doesn’t take much to go over their heads on a given topic. I actually have a lot of respect for missionaries and I think this largely has to do with my prior service in the military, I can empathize with what it means to leave home at 19 or 21 for a few years to work a demanding job while being subject to a strict dress codes and discipline standards that far exceed anything found on your typical college campus (thank Christ).The other Patrick quickly greeted and bid farewell to the Priesthood holders, excusing himself with the made up justification that he had to get to class, a total lie. The same sex marriage topic is close to heart, and my guess is that he wasn’t in the mood to deal with the pair. Leaving me stranded to get tag teamed [
], the other Patrick flicked his cig into the garbage can and took off down the path. The conversation took the usual course, commenting on the weather, thanksgiving, and all the other mundane BS strangers gab about, like I give a crap how bad traffic got here in town on black Friday. Finally they got the hook they were looking for when they asked what my major was.“Philosophy and Religious Studies.”
“Oh wow. What faith are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I’m not privileged to be a person of faith, I’m not a believer.”
“You say that like you wish you could be.”
“I do.”
In retrospect, I fell like I was misleading them by giving them some false hope that I was some kind of golden investigator, and that the Spirit is ready to move over me, I just needed the right prompting, the right guidance. Naturally, the followed up on that confession of mine.
“What is stopping you?
“The world as it is, I guess.”
“Yeah, it’s getting pretty bad out there.”
Damn, that was cliché as hell, that whole little exchange we just had. I actually felt frustrated here, because I knew they weren’t getting what I was trying to convey, so I tried again.
“No, it’s always been bad, but it’s better now. There is a lot of suffering out there, so much so, I don’t think I could convince myself that this was part of some kind of plan, or some design and the present is some kind of intended effect.”
“Ah yes, but what if I told you that we were spiritual beings just have a human experience before we move on to greater things?”
What the hell? See, this is the kind of crap that bothers me with Mormon folk, it’s like they have this stock of rapid fire aphorisms that feel and sound like they were constructed by some little eternally happy and perky gnome in the basement of Hallmark’s headquarters. I imagine in my mind’s eye that this is the sort of crap that passes for wisdom in Mormon chapels across the heartland, that it’s said by some shmuck in a dark suit and red tie and the immediate response of everyone paying attention is to give a knowing nod, like the fake audience of an infomercial. This did remind me of a passage I’ve committed to memory.
“Heh. You guys ever heard of Thomas Mann or his work ‘The Magic Mountain’?”
“No, I haven’t”
“Well, there is a part I thought was really good, so I memorized like you guys probably memorized Bible and Book of Mormon verses. It goes like this: ‘Do not, for heaven’s sake, speak to me of the ennobling effects of physical suffering! A soul without a body is as inhuman and horrible as a body without a soul- though the latter is the rule and the former the exception.”
“That’s very good. So you believe in souls?”
“Huh? No, that was just part of the text. I guess the purpose of me quoting Mann was to show that suffering isn’t much of a good thing.”
“Okay, but suffering in this world is only temporary, and will be alleviated by the Heavenly Father when the time comes. I think when a person comes to understand where we come from and where we are going, it helps put suffering in it‘s proper perspective.”
Oh naïveté, thy name is Mormon [
]. Can you imagine using that line to comfort some starving orphan in Darfur? That once they understand the cosmic Mormon narrative, it will so radically change how they suffer that it couldn’t help but be a blessing to them? I beat down my jaded bitterness.“Guys, I don’t think that explanation really works or helps. I mean, you don’t tell war orphan amputees that their experiences thus far mean very little in the greater drama of the spiritual lives, a drama they supposedly chose to be apart of, but are now blocked from remembering now.”
“But God doesn’t enjoy man’s suffering, but we need suffering, so we can understand what joy truly is.”
“Oh I don’t know about that. I was reading this book of collected writings by this called Somerset Maugham, where he talked about what he saw in hospital wards when he was training to be a doctor. In his opinion, suffering often made people worse human beings altogether**.”
“Was he a philosopher?”
“Naw, just a writer.”
“Sure you are not an English major? You sure do know a lot of authors.”
“Huh? No. I just read a lot when I was in the military because…”
“Thank you for your service.”
“…sure, anyways, because there was a lot of downtime, and I was searching for a way to put it all into perspective. An existential crisis I guess.”
I stopped the conversation around this point because I was bored, and wanted to get on with my day. They asked if I wanted to meet with them, but I declined, too busy (moar lies). Nice guys, but they reminded me of the mouth breathers who populate MD&D. Will the day ever come when a Mopologist displays some depth?
**When I went back to look this up today and I hardly did Maugham justice“…I set down in my notebooks, not once or twice, but in a dozen places, the facts that I had seen. I knew that suffering did not ennoble; it degraded. It made men selfish, mean, petty, and suspicious. It absorbed them in small things. It did not make them more than men; it made them less than men; and I wrote ferociously that we learn resugnation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.” Maugham’s The Summing Up. Page 62 in my edition.
