The Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend. After a rainy, windy, March-like May, the unexpected kiss of a perfect day. Met friends for brunch in the East Village, walked them over to the West Village, to my favorite bookstore in the world, then wandered lazily, contentedly, sun-kissedly, down Sixth Avenue. At the corner of Houston and Sixth, in the playground parking lot, we saw some teenaged girls performing drill team-like dance maneuvers, to the unintelligible urgency of a way-too-loud boom box. They were dressed identically. Some of their brethren, dressed in the same color combo of t-shirt and pants, pressed upon us (I was the one who accepted it) a tract enumerating the different ways HELL is described in the Bible.

“A lake of fire,” read my friend M. as we crossed Houston Street. “A bottomless pit, a horrible tempest.”

On the other side of Houston Street, similarly-clad followers awaited us, with outstretched tracts in Spanish. We smilingly held up our English one, strolled on. We sought a spot in which to sip soothing drinks in the sunlight. Note the alliteration in that sentence, the sibilance similar to the serpent who tempted Eve into sin.

“A place of everlasting burnings,” M. read. “A furnace of fire, a devouring fire.”

I have never been much of a fan of Hell (“a place of torments, of everlasting punishment”). I grew up an itinerant Protestant (depending on who was paying attention in my childhood). I was a Presbyterian (Sunday school), an Episcopalian (confirmed), a Lutheran (baptized) and attended services of the Methodist and the Christian Science churches (just good friends). None of these disciplines required drill team-style dancing in a parking lot, accompanied by the threat of Hell (“a place where people pray, where people cry for mercy, where people wail, where people blaspheme God”). But you know? To each his own.

You ask me, as a marketer, I would gear my religious conversion techniques towards the positive. “Hey, here’s a way to govern ourselves and to treat other creatures, here’s how to work towards spiritual strength, here are some guidelines out of misery” – but if others hope to bring passersby to their own chosen Savior through harsh threats (“a place of no forgiveness, of filthiness, of weeping, of sorrows, of outer darkness”), and military-style dance, that is the right they have been granted by the Constitution, a freedom they have achieved by the sacrifices of others.

The ones we’re supposed to remember on Memorial Day.

Labels: drill team, Memorial Day, Partners and Crime, Protestants

posted by Elizabeth at 9:22 PM