I'm sitting in my kitchen listening to Billy Bragg's "Greetings from the New Brunette" from his album Talking with the Taxman About Poetry and thinking about how a few hours ago I was standing in my building's doorway talking with the Jehovah's Witnesses about Zen under a bright cloudless sky.

The Witnesses paid us a visit when S was home, but he answered the door. Ever polite, he took their tracts, smiled, and closed the door. I don't think they talked more than ten seconds. Not me! I'm a realistic optimist, if such a thing exists, and I'm ever hopeful that things will change for the better with just a little painless nudging here and there. Of course I have my darker days, days when I'm convinced that substantive change is impossible, at least in my lifetime. But then I get over it and realize that it's up to us and say to hell with it, why not give it a shot, and then I get off my ass and find myself arguing about the existence of god with three middle-aged Witnesses. What else can we do on this cock-eyed journey we're on except try?

I answered the door and they said hello and I said right away, "Thank you for coming by, but I'm a zen buddhist." One of the men (there were two and one woman) said "Really?" in that I-don't-believe-you sort of voice, then he asked me if I'd converted or if I was born into it. I told him that I was born an atheist and that really freaked them out. "What do you mean you were born an atheist?" he asked me and I told him that neither of my parents believed in god when I was born, so I wasn't raised with religion. I didn't go into how I had done some searching myself in high school, how I went to a lutheran church because I had a crush on the son of the minister (he was really cute) and how because of that boy I even sang in the choir and went to a youth group camp and really did want to believe. I didn't go into how I dabbled in Catholicism too because I loved the iconography and the saints and I still do. I didn't go into how I never did believe in Jesus or god because the whole thing seemed so preposterous to me and that even so I had lived my life conservatively, even if my politics have always been liberal. I did say, though, that I didn't have to believe in God to not be afraid of dying.

"So you believe in reincarnation then?" he asked me, and I told him that our western idea of reincarnation is from Hinduism and that in zen it's different. I said that we don't come from nothing and when we die we don't become nothing, in the literal sense. "If you burn a piece of paper it doesn't just disappear, right? It turns to heat and smoke and ash, and we're the same way," I told him. And then he asked me about evolution and I said that yes, I believed in evolution, and he said that if I believe in evolution I must believe in god because there was a beginning and god did it, and I told him that belief in a "beginning" is an idea we made up and that there was no beginning and there will be no end and he nearly laughed at that in disbelief. I told him that in zen there is not the same linear idea of time when it comes to the universe, and that therefore there is no 'beginning' and no 'creator.' Then I told him that zen buddhists don't need the threat of hell to behave well, and we don't believe we have to earn merit with god in order to go to heaven because we don't believe in heaven either. "We try to act right today because this is all we have, this moment, and we have to take care of each other. We have to try to leave the earth a better place than we found it, not worse, and we've got to be kind to each other right now," I told him. The other man asked me "How do you help, with money or something?" And I said that yes, I give money, but that I also volunteer and give my time and try to treat my family and friends and strangers with kindness because this is all there is. "Can you give me some money then?" and I told him if I had some maybe I'd give it to him, and then we all laughed.

They knew it was time to go, that there was no convincing me. "Well I didn't know all that, so thanks for telling us," said Rene, the one woman in the group, and then asked if I'd do something for her and take a tract and I did. From "A Peaceful New World: Will It Come?":

"Just imagine, in a Paradise earth, all sicknesses and physical infirmities will also be healed! God's Word assures us: 'No resident will say: "I am sick."' (Isaiah 33:24) God's Word also promises: 'He [God] will actually swallow up death forever.' -- Isaiah 25:8."

Just another day in the neighborhood, and I didn't even get to the important stuff, like the myth of a separate existence and how our actions are our only true possessions. Somehow I doubt they'll come back to chat. But a girl can hope!!