preaching – Bethany Leger

I Hope You’re Choking in Heaven

The Bible says, “look after the widows.” (James 1:27) Gladys* was an 82-year-old veteran Jehovah’s Witness. In the span of forty years, she completed several holy tours, preaching throughout multiple states and countries. After retiring from missionary work, she smelled like cat food and watched soap operas from her recliner. Gladys was a widow, and I quietly wondered how many years I’d get if I pushed her down the stairs.

Gladys was an asshole. She spoke over you and had a condescending stare as if she were waiting for a punchline. She was more Estelle Getty than Jesus; which would be awesome if it were her job to make people laugh for a living. (Not the case, pussycat.) Instead, Gladys believed she belonged to a select few destined to live in heaven with Jesus after they die. The Jehovah’s Witnesses refer to this VIP group as the “144,000”, a number they plucked from the highly-symbolic book of Revelation to support their skewed interpretation of the End Times. If Jesus were President, the 144,000 would be his administration; executives who vow to help Jesus rule over the humans. Gladys longed for heaven, so she could literally look down on everyone else.

When it comes to cranky old people, I’m of two minds. First, I don’t know what they’ve had to endure, so I should show compassion. The other half of me says, if you’ve managed to isolate yourself from everyone with your Bible-beating and inflated sense of self-importance, well, karma’s a bitch. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other far-right evangelicals, are stocked with cranky old widows like Gladys, because this environment validates and reinforces their narcissism. Of course, there’s something to be said for making it that long, for having a sage perspective that comes with decades of life experience. The catch is, if you’re going to come full circle and insist on behaving like an entitled toddler, no one’s going to stick around to change your diapers.

Yes, I’m going to be a widow one day. I’ve tried to force my husband to sign a pact that says we die together, holding hands in conjoined hospital beds. But, being that he’s ten years older, he reminds me that the odds are not stacked in my favor. Maybe this prospect scares me and I, too, end up cranky and distressed. Maybe I end up needing a home health aide. Maybe I wind up on a park bench talking to pigeons. At the very least, I don’t harbor some delusion of cohabitating with Christ to boss around future generations.

Gladys used to eat a pudding cup in the afternoons. One day, her tired granddaughter, who I happened to adore and who had an appointment she couldn’t get out of, asked if I would watch her grandmother for a few hours. Once we were alone, Gladys demanded I drive clear across town in rush hour to pick up more of her favorite pudding cups at the one grocery store that still carried them. I said, no.

“You’re a real piece of work,” she said, rolling her eyes. Then, she turned her back to me and headed downstairs to the finished basement where she lived.

Later, I heard a commotion somewhere in the house. I followed the sound to the top of the staircase to hear Gladys choking. Oh shit, I thought. I hoofed it down the stairs and stepped through the door which was already partially open. “Are you okay?” Before responding to me, she regained her composure and placed her pudding cup by the phone. Someone was on speaker.

“Hey,” she yapped into the receiver. “Let me call you back.” The other person didn’t hear her.

“I’m with you Gladys—” said the voice on the other end, “—she’s an idiot.”

Gladys died a year later. I’ve met my share of pious curmudgeons over the years, but Gladys takes the cake (or, pudding). In honor of Gladys, I raise my spoon: I hope you choke on it.

Amen.

(*Her real name. That’s how much she sucks.)

I Don’t Drink, But I’m Trying to Start

I did a lot of solo travel in my twenties. Bored on the home turf, I networked with other Jehovah’s Witnesses to expand my social horizons. I want to check out Chicago, I’d say. Anyone have a cousin in San Francisco? Boston? I was beginning to close my eyes and fling darts at a map. At one point, I became obsessed with the Pacific Northwest. Dallas was a concrete jungle, hot and unrelenting, and Seattle was the home to Seasonal Affective Disorder. Sign my ass up.

The family I stayed with on that first trip was fun and generous. The wife was in real estate, and the husband was a photographer. As Witnesses go, they were very well off and had property on the Puget Sound. I had hoped to visit every summer as a respite from the Texas heat, so when they eventually asked me to housesit while they went to Central America, I hopped on a plane faster than you could fling a fish across Pike Place Market.

As planned, I looked for the local Witnesses. During the first week of what was supposed to be four, let’s just say, I would’ve received a warmer welcome sharing rusty needles near a dumpster fire under the I-5. I got stank-face immediately from married 19-year-olds; they were on their starter marriage, and feared I was moving in on their husbands whose facial hair was still coming in. Then, I met a modern-day Judas, a depressive frenemy who offered to show me Seattle landmarks only to talk trash behind my back to other girls in the congregation. One was especially sweet. “Why are you even here?”, she snipped. I dipped into my purse and offered her a Prozac, but the gesture was lost.

As my trip dragged on and the already frosty reception took a biting turn, I apologized to my lovely friends down in Costa Rica and booked the first flight out. The evening before I left, I stood on their front lawn to watch the sun set over the water. It was bittersweet, knowing I was leaving behind a beloved slice of the world just to get some relative peace back home. Suddenly, I heard a voice from across the street. “Hey there”, she called out, maneuvering the sprinkler in her yard from one side to the other. “Are you the house sitter?” I gave a polite nod to the friendly neighbor. “If you want to come over for a glass of wine, we’d love to have you.”

Like any cult, it’s us versus them. But, what happens when you realize your people are not your people? Is it important, or lazy, to create these moral shortcuts? Is it possible that you might need to reassess your relationships? Your religion, or politics? Your desperate need to be right? I felt disappointed and isolated by my religious community, but if anything was going to drive me to drink, it was a nice stranger confirming my suspicions. The nameless neighbor across the street showed me more kindness with her invitation, the only invitation to someone’s home in the two weeks I was alone—and she wasn’t one of “us”.

A source later told me that two people cried when they heard of my early departure. Of course, they weren’t crying for me. They cried because their life sucked, and they knew it was easier to shit on me than perform any self-reflection. Call it insecurity, or a genuine chemical imbalance from a lack of sunlight, I don’t know, or care. Wine Lady may not have had the answers to life’s greatest questions, and I didn’t need her to.

It’s Beautiful, Dammit: Why Blue Skies and Sunshine Made Me Want to Die

I’m driving home from the coffee shop when I look out the window. The neighborhood is bathed in a soft, early morning glow. Everyone is still asleep. Bursting cherry blossoms bristle in the crisp spring wind, the sidewalks peppered with the pop of purple coneflower. Suddenly, the sky yawns, big and blue and beautiful. As I soak in the view, I feel slightly unsettled. Fingers coiled around the steering wheel, I examine each passing house: the one with a brick porch that’s a different color from the other bricks. The one where the shutters have a half-moon carved above the slats. Espresso wafts through my Volkswagen as I coast down the lazy, bohemian boulevard. I notice if the front door has a screen, a brass knocker pinned at the top, or is propped open and ready to greet whomever may come moseying along. It’s going to be a perfect day for preaching, only I escaped the cult seven years ago, and I don’t have to knock on another fucking door for the rest of my life.

Every Saturday, I’d wake up at 7:30 am, begrudgingly, throw on a skirt, take a nervous shit, gather my Bible and a stack of dog-eared magazines, and haul ass to the Kingdom Hall. Granola bar hanging out of my mouth, I would relish the last bite of breakfast and moment of silence before heading in. Next, I would say hello (begrudgingly), sit through an obligatory pep talk about saving humanity, then brace for the heat or blistering cold, depending on what we were subjected to that month. On the way to the “territory”, I would jerk my car into a Quik Stop, take another nervous shit and dry heave. Twenty minutes later, I parked my broke (but enlightened!) ass on WASP country, with irritated stares already peering through their fancy blinds. Jehovah’s Witnesses infamous door-to-door ministry is a nuisance at best, certainly for the disoriented homeowner jostled awake by a religious zealot, but also for the one doing the knocking. I used to pray, not for salvation or world peace, but for rain. Please rain, I thought, and spare us all.

I grew up in Dallas, Texas, where most of the year is oppressively hot. Like a vampire, I recoiled at the sun, pining instead for cool, overcast skies. I rejoiced in a thunderstorm. I had been known to frolic in a puddle, or two. But most notably, rain meant those crazy people wouldn’t be out proselytizing. Rain was the sole qualifier, the one get-out-of-jail-free card we had where Jehovah’s Witnesses in suburban America wouldn’t be pressured to preach to strangers that day—at least not on foot. We also did ‘phone witnessing’, the Jehovah’s Witness equivalent of telemarketing. Hello, you live in a gated community, which is why I’m giving you my unsolicited religious advice through this method instead. And, we did ‘letter writing’: hand-scribbled junk mail punctuated with scriptures and stickers, letting grown women with a Lisa Frank obsession express their creativity in ways they wouldn’t otherwise be allowed to. I, however, risked the guilt trip that came with opting out of these alternatives, and went back to bed. Preacher on the streets, sinner in the sheets, indeed.

But, if it was beautiful outside, say, 65 degrees and not a cloud in the sky, you were screwed, destined to spend a rare, sparkling two hours now tarnished by the drudgery. No one wanted to talk to us, and if we were honest with each other, none of us wanted to be there, either. We descended on neighborhoods, uninvited, to arrogantly shove our brand of religion down someone’s throat on their own doorstep. At least a fraction of us knew this was wrong, but we were following orders; the door-to-door ministry was mandatory, and anyone who didn’t report for duty would answer for it later. People cursed, slammed doors, or would simply notice us from a distance and quietly head inside. I hated blue skies and sunshine because it meant I would be seen in the daylight doing something that, in fact, put me in a dark place. My religious life isolated me from the rest of the world, and preaching on a stunning, panoramic morning only served as a reminder of how lonely I really was.

Occasionally, I’ll get a faint hit of PTSD on a bright day, though it quickly subsides, replaced by a rush of relief—I’m free. Spring and summer are very different now. Lounging in my plastic Adirondack chair in a tattered bikini, I welcome the warmth on my cheeks. (My face, pervert.) I’m enjoying my little patch of land uninterrupted, happy to let my neighbor do the same. No more doors to knock down, souls to save, and if I take a shit, it’s for the pure joy of it.