Knockin' on Heaven's Door by Sal Moriarty

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg. Thomas Jefferson

When I was a kid, young men would come around our neighborhood wearing white button-down shirts, black ties and name tags. They usually rode bicycles. They were Mormon missionaries.

One day, I was playing with a buddy when two missionaries coasted into the yard. My friend cast a wary eye in their direction. They got off their bikes and introduced themselves. I don't recall any religious chitchat. They weren't around for long. My friend's mother came storming out the door waving a huge rolling pin, screaming at them. I don't remember exactly what she said, but I recall the word cult being thrown around.

The missionaries calmly mounted their bikes and rode away. This, clearly, was not their first rodeo. They had been exposed to mainstream Christian love and charity before.

Fast forward a decade or so, and I have a new girlfriend. It never occurred to me to ask what church, if any, she attended. My opinions on religion, skeptical ones, were already forming and it didn't matter. Then, one day, my dad mentioned to a lady at work I had a serious girlfriend. She inquired as to her name. Turned out she knew her, went to church with the family. What church is that? my dad asked. The Mormon church.

Here we go.

I wandered home after work, unaware anything was amiss, and caught both biblical barrels from my staunchly Southern Baptist mother. She was always kind to Mormon missionaries when they visited our home. She felt it her Christian obligation, but make no mistake, in her mind, they belonged to a cult. That meant they were hell-bound.

So, there was a dust-up, and I'm sure the house was filled with overwrought, anguished prayer that night. But there was zero chance I was going to break up with my pretty new girlfriend because she was born into a Mormon home. She wasn't even an active Mormon. She was kind of a rebel, and that had its own appeal.

It was less of a big deal to my dad. He went to church and did all the stuff expected of him, but I believe he was doubtful of those claiming to know the mind of God. To him, I was dating a nice, hardworking young woman. It was a made-up problem, and there were enough real problems in life.

By the time I married my rebel girlfriend, my mother loved her. Though we eventually divorced, my parents loved her till the days they died.

Fast forward about five years. I lived in Houston, with the rebel wife. She had a great uncle and aunt who lived there, too (by great, I mean they were the uncle and aunt of, I think, her mother). They were both about eighty. They grew the best gardens imaginable, had an old cat named Tom, and never missed a Rockets game on television.  They were devout Mormons. They had no children. 

We visited them often and helped out with this or that chore (I got to plow the garden a few times...not pretty). However, these were not visits of obligation; visiting was a joy. Simple, delicious meals, followed by conversation in the den with my great-uncle-by-marriage. Both Uncle Louis and Aunt Sidney (he called her “Toots”) were amazing, but Uncle Louis was a singular man.

Why?

Because he contained not a self-serving, pompous bone in his body. He told great stories about his life but was equally interested in your stories. He was kind and did not feel the need to put down others to make himself feel big. He had too much confidence as a man to engage in such nonsense. The only times I heard him raise his voice were near the end, when he was in pain, but he even carried pain with a certain grace. Now days, I rarely meet his kind. I miss him terribly.

For a while, the old couple kicked around the idea of leaving their homestead to us, the rebel and me. I, understandably, asked Uncle Louis wouldn't they rather leave it to the church.

“They have enough money,” he said, with a wink.

One person's cult is another person's gateway to heaven. And vise-versa.