For the record, I almost never stop for someone who accosts me on the street. I will remove myself from tuned-out iPod world for someone who looks genuinely in need of directions, but when it comes to street canvassers, creepy cult guys, and the folks who want to send me (goyim!) to Israel for free, I generally just pretend I don't see them.
But on Sunday, these two women stopped me, and I think the only reason why I gave them the time of day was because one looked kind of like this young Israeli TA of mine who I particularly like. They weren't pushing any literature into my hands or wearing those dorky little vest-ettes they make the Amnesty International people where, so I stopped to let them ask me if I was familiar with the female image of God. I thought maybe I could get an interesting story to tell someone out of it. I didn't really understand what they were asking, but in due time I realized they actually wanted me to know that the world is going to come to a screeching halt in 2012, and I will be Saved only if I open my heart to...well...something or other, it wasn't really made clear. Something about how the kingdom of heaven is going to totally be the shit, since there won't be any wars or fighting, and, presumably, fat little cherubs playing harps will be chilling out with your dead grandparents and elementary school teachers. I don't know if my total inability to get what they were talking about was rooted in my lack of knowledge about modern Christian extremism or their crazy. But by the time I decided it was time to get out of there, they had full-out descended upon me. With one woman on either side of me, my back was almost totally to 19 University Place.
The older, Hispanic woman asked me what I practice. I said, I'm sorry, I don't feel comfortable discussing that with someone I just met on the street.
"But in heaven, we will all be equal," she told me. "Have you ever considered the afterlife?"
Well, sure. I've contemplated what happens after you die about as much as the next living human being, but it's kind of a bummer to talk about, and it's such a beautiful Sunday afternoon. I said, not particularly, realizing immediately after I did that she probably pegged me for a hell-bound heathen for whom there is no Salvation.