Molly Mormon does Georgia….
One of my sisters, aka one of the Little Girls (a family name for the two youngest females in our family of five children), recently left the loving and protective arms of Zion and traveled a ways south and definitely a ways out of her comfort zone.
She is now a resident of Savannah, Georgia, which, as I understand it, is pretty much the deep south. I’m checking with my resident Southern Belle friend Joshilyn Jackson, author of the BESTSELLING (shameless plug for her book) gods in Alabama, and if she disabuses me of this notion, I’ll return and report, but for all intents and purposes right now, LG#2 is in the Deep South.
She called me yesterday. Things are going great for her and her husband there, no matter how nervous they were to leave Utah behind. The only problem, it seems, is the Southern Baptists. “You’ve never seen anything like it, Nat,” she told me. “This one neighbor came over and told me my kids were going to hell because they were Mormon. They are trying to convert me. And the Southern Baptists run everything around here. They have their hands in everything. You just wouldn’t believe it. They even tell their kids not to play with kids who aren’t Baptist.”
Moment of silence here, whilst we all digest what my Mormon sister, formerly of Utah–home of the Saints, nothing but the Saints, so help me Joseph Smith–has just said. After a moment, I, of course, started laughing. “Gee, now you know what it feels like.”
“Natalie,” she scolded in the voice my family has always reserved for me. “I have been to a lot of wards, and they have never told us not to let our children play with others, or tell people they are going to hell because they’re not ’saved.’”
“Well, actually, LG#2, they do (I didn’t call her LG#2, but if I call her by her real name on my highly irreverant blog, she will return to Utah and shoot me. I’m sure she has a gun by now. I hear Southerners like their guns. Kinda like Utahns.). Mormonism is the ONLY TRUE RELIGION. Sound familiar? Hmmmmmmm? Only Mormons who have been through the temple go to the Celestial Kingdom? Heard that one? Hmmmmmm. The Mormons have been running EVERYTHING around here for years, and nobody bats an eyelash. The problem is when you get too many of any one group in any one place they really believe in that strength in numbers cliche.”
“Natalie,” she says, with a snort of disgust. I decided, at this point, to let her off the hook, because:
a) She admitted to me a few years back that she didn’t believe Mormonism was the only true religion. It’s more a cultural thing for her, than anything else.
b) She’s quite funny, and I enjoy her company, plus I would like to visit Georgia, and see these Southern Baptists in action for myself, and it would be nice to have a place to stay.
c) I think she did somewhat relate to the object lesson I was giving her, never mind the fact that it’s not at all my business to give her object lessons or point out life’s interesting little quirks. But she was the baby of the family. I got kind of used to it.
So, another of life’s little lessons, taught in an interesting and telling way. Even when one moves from one theocracy (where one belongs) into another (where one does not), moving is still not so earthshattering the blinders come completely off. I suspect that might take a tsunami.
Tomorrow, I shall explain Life’s Lesson No. 4,742: Cell phones that are dropped into toilet bowls, even CLEAN toilet bowls, cease to work. And yes, cell phones can fall into toilet bowls, and NO I was not talking into the phone using that end.
Tonight, in honor of the Southern Baptists, the film screening at Chez Collins is Baptists at our Barbecue, a small, independent film made by Mormons. Or so I presume. I shall return and report. (If you go to the link, you will see it is listed as Baptitsts at our Barbecue. Freudian Slip? Those evil sinners?)
