Sitting outside of my Eighth Avenue Brooklyn laundromat - Internetting, blogging to be precise - I was approached by a Baptist with a “message from Christ.” He wanted to know if I wanted to receive it. I politely declined, smiled, and watched him cross the street back into the Memorial Baptist Church as a van with the rest of his group, marked from Lebanon, PA, pulled up and unloaded into the church.
The line between liberal Brooklyn and the rest of the country (that we self-centered New Yorkers seem to forget exists) was blurred for a snap-second.
Sure, I will shrug it off as the non-believing cultural Jew, but more than anything, I think it’s a product of me being raised as I was, where I was, that gives me the brief chills about coming face to face with organized religion. I’ll always have a million questions about how people can believe the things they do and why they feel it’s the most important thing there is. But, in a city where you feel like part of the most important race of people in the world, it’s odd to consider that other people think of you as a minority - a great unbeliever in a god-fearing society. There are a million questions I’ve challenged myself to consider about organized religion, but I like turning the wheels in this way - asking myself what it’s like to be considered the sinner among saints.
M
