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| Disillusion: I love the smell of Xians in the morning |
Posted by
callei on Saturday, December 13, 2003 - 12:17 AM PST
I was taking the bus to work every morning, a mellow ride with few weirdoes, whiners, or boom boxes. It was restful. I read and watched the old oak tress thru the window. I liked it. Except...
There is one stop at which the bus always lingered, where a man with a megaphone stood all day preaching free form. He wears a mini umbrella on his head. His amp, when he is using a microphone, is covered in fish stickers and "Jesus loves you!" stickers. When the bus pulled up, he walked to the open door and, though his bullhorn, told us about how we were all bad people doing bad things.
Normally I find this sort of thing amusing. I mean I love to see people being themselves and letting loose. And for the first few weeks this guy was a hoot. I would put down my book and listen to what he was saying. I would watch the faces of the other passengers and see what they thought of it. And I gotta' say its neat to see 20 people all look guilty at once for some unnamed "sin" on a bus.
Most days his message was innocuous enough; be kind to children, call your parents, be nice to a stranger today, don't get married unless you really mean it and so forth. Nice personal messages that might even have made a personal impact on "believers" and didn't piss the rest of us off.
Then one day he turned mean. Instead of "You are all sinners because you don't call your mother often enough", he put one foot on the step into the bus and told us that we were all liars and that, among us, were devil worshippers that kill babies, that we shouldn't trust each other, should turn away from each other, should read the bibble and only the bibble (and me with a murder mystery in my hands!) and on and on.
I don't know that I have ever felt the vibe in a room go change so fast or go so mean before. Normally it was a nice sleepy, companionable feeling. People making room for other people and their hangovers. But that day, for the rest of the ride, people were sitting up straight and standing as far from each other as they could. The usual low hum of people talking stopped totally. We rode in a hostile, cold, fearful silence.
I wonder what made him preach hate like that. I wonder what made him take it out on that bus. I wonder if he talked like that most of the time and I had just been lucky and been there only for the nice bits before. But mostly I wonder why we were already to hate each other.
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Average Rating : 3.9
Total ratings : 9
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| I love the smell of Xians in the morning | Login/Create an account | 19 Comments |
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Re: I love the smell of Xians in the morning
by Comedian (eccentrically_long@yahoo.com)
on Dec 13, 2003 - 06:52 AM
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Told you guys that Metairie was wierdo central. THat many track homes with a mall-theatre that empty can't be good.
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Re: I love the smell of Xians in the morning
by Anya on Dec 13, 2003 - 12:02 PM
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That's what happens when someone gets scared of their own shadow and need to blame someone and/or hate someone...easier to blame something other than the self.
...Did anyone ask about how many criminals and thieves were under his church? I mean come on...someone needs to encourage him to brag about how much better his church is.
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Re: I love the smell of Xians in the morning
by bettie_x (strangersangel@hotmail.com)
on Dec 13, 2003 - 02:59 PM
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"But mostly I wonder why we were already to hate each other."
because all of us at some very early age before true memory took over learned that the freak with the megaphone is ALWAYS RIGHT.
Either that or it's the fact that 99% of people who are "getting along" are simply killing time between fights. It sucks but it's true.
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Re: I love the smell of Xians in the morning
by daria_4 (-)
on Dec 14, 2003 - 06:10 AM
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If he really was preaching the "harmless" stuff up until that point and you weren't just catching the good times, I'd wager that something happened in his personal life to bring on the hateful stuff. His daughter had an abortion he just found out about, his son is dating an atheist... something along those lines.
The other stuff, while it mattered to him before, was safe material--something he knew he could get away with and probably even win some people over with. But now that his life isn't so peachy keen anymore, he's either "saving" others so they don't let the same things go wrong or he's just balls to the wall pissed about it--or both.
That's just my take on the sudden change. I could be way out in left field. I've seen that pattern of preach before in the church I used to go to. It was actually amusing at the time, since I knew the preacher's daughter was doing way worse things than he ever actually knew about.
As for being so ready to hate each other; I'm no philosopher, so I don't have any grand theories. While being nice (or at least polite) takes less energy than being mean and hateful, people--on the average--are easily persuaded. We're not all good on the inside. Sure, on the whole most people probably are. But a human being has a balance of good and bad emotions; plus plenty of inbetween stuff. Once you get their imaginations going on one or the other, who knows what you'll get. Some people were probably concentrating on what was true about themselves of the stuff he had just preached, which could easily lend to a standoffish posture. Others were probably looking around trying to figure out what of the hateful message was true about their busmates, and as their imaginations got to going, they were definitely going to be wary after they figured out what they thought was wrong with everyone.
In essence, the best answer I can give to why everyone was so ready to hate each other is that they were pretty much sheep material. Hopefully, there were others on the bus like you, callei, who were thinking twice and taking notice of what was going on.
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Re: I love the smell of Xians in the morning
by Kira (mod_complexathotmaildotcom)
on Dec 14, 2003 - 10:22 AM
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I used to think that Brother Jed* was harmless enough, until one day he brought his brood of 25 or so offspring to campus with him. Nothing like seeing a 7 year old kid wearing a shirt that says:
Got
Aids
Yet?
I just don't get it. Why focus so much on hate? And then poison the minds of your children with it?
*For those of you who've never had the pleasure, Brother Jed and his band of merry fundamentalists travel around college campuses (primarlily in the midwest?) spreading the gospel. They generally go to the larger outdoor public spaces and stand around and wave signs and scream at people for wearing shorts and tanktops. The scary thing is, they don't work. Just preach and travel, all funded by donation. I know he had his own newsgroup at some point, devoted mainly to people complaining about him.
And yes, he has a web site.
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Re: I love the smell of Xians in the morning
by feralucce (Iwouldliketokillyou@gofuckyourself.com)
on Dec 14, 2003 - 08:32 PM
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Plyn: I dunno... I remember that guy... something was sooooo odd about him... there would be time were I wold approach and he would not see me, and the tone would change... it was odd... and I never liked the guy anyway... but perhaps, like tarantino in little nicky... dude can see something..
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Re: I love the smell of Xians in the morning
by Arthegarn on Dec 15, 2003 - 07:52 AM
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Well I don't know, Callei, but I see no nice bits there. hey, c'mon, telling people they are going to hell is not nice, period. "Lesus loves you" goes fairly bad with "you are going to hell"
I have my own opinion about those people, anyway, and I think there are two kinds of them. One of them deserves my respect no matter how misguided they can be, the other does not. This one guy sounds like the second but then again I wasn't there and I don't have an evidence to form an opinion. Perhaps I'll meet him in the Shmeng party :P and I can review this topic then :P
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Re: I love the smell of Xians in the morning
by MystryssRavynDarque (A1Mandi04@aol.com)
on Dec 18, 2003 - 07:56 AM
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I'm surprised that I have not yet seen anyone in my town do that, but it doesn't mean there isn't someone out there doing that right now. I live in a very Christian, conservative town that is very unaccepting of most people who are not like them. There is a man here that drives around in a car that is painted with Christian symbols and scriptures. I call it the Christmobile. He doesn't like people to look at him though, and this girl in my world religions class wanted to take a picture of his car for our project and he gave her the evil eye about it and followed her in his car for a while. She was really scared about it. People need to stop being so fanatical about everything and let people live their lives and be happy. Isn't that what we should be trying to acheive in life? Happiness. No, I don't want people to be happy by torturing others if that is what makes them happy, but I am sure there is something else like chocolate that could make them happy. Love to everyone.
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Re: I love the smell of Xians in the morning
by Domkitten (saradevil@saradevil.com)
on Dec 18, 2003 - 09:29 PM
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For some reason this really made me think of how the only section of the church that seems to really have taken hold in Korea is the door to door, street pounding, prayer thumpers called Jehova's.
It's interesting though, in a country that is still 75% buddhist, that you have a small minority christian sect this is fairly high and mighty.
One day in class a few months ago we were talking about things we like to do for holidays, we generally talked about the Korean holidays, except for one of my students who started talking about Christmas. Oddly, as soon as he started to speak about Christ his entire outlook in class, and attitude towards his classmates changed and became immediately less accepting of their beliefs.
As with your gentlemen bringing down the vibe on the bus, he managed to destroy a perfectly good discussion with his sudden need to preach at us.
I don't know where all the negativity in Christianity comes from, it's certianly not what Jesus had in mind, I think most of the problems probably arose with the Apostle Paul and his inability to really accept the role thrust upon him on that dirt covered road. I think he saw the light, and became the most unconciously hostile person ever. And, since he was at the same time rather rabid about spreading his beliefs, also singal handedly responsible for the downfal of a fairly happy go lucky religion.
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