By For Sylvia Selzer
So many ways to paradise or nowhere!
Not thirty five feet from our holiday let,
sitting on a county council bench
overlooking the sea – where the container ships,
waiting to cross the sand-bar, turn with the tides –
sitting in the hearing of terns and curlews
are a different pair each day
of female Jehovah’s Witnesses.
You baptise and christen them ‘The Joysters’.
They set up a collapsible stand –
next to a black municipal refuse bin –
for flimsy leaflets, and advertising
an online bible course. Their witness time
is spent under a black umbrella, chatting
to each other, ignoring passing sinners
on their way to walk the Coastal Path
to St Patrick’s Church at Llanbadrig,
or paddle-board and kayak on the briny.
There seem as many ways to row to heaven
or hell as there are birds of the air and the sea –
each journey with its own arcane charts,
its especially beatified isles,
its superior monsters of the deep.
Jehovah's WitnessesWales Coastal Path
Harvey Lillywhite
October 13, 2023This time, as I read the poem, I wondered about the destinations anywhere between paradise and nowhere. And I decided all those spots are so many other nowheres, and, at the same time, paradises. Sometimes I worry about not feeling special enough…something missing? Isn’t there a grand conclusion I should be feeling from the holiday that sums it all up? And it reminded me of an old zen joke: a blank sheet of paper, framed, with the question underneath, ‘What’s missing from this picture?’
In this poem, nothing is missing. You have the ships and tides and terns and curlews, the witness, the black umbrella, and the church. And holding it all up, of course, the monsters. What a beauty!
Sarah Selzer
October 15, 2023Having witnessed (pun intended) The Joysters first hand for the last two stays, this captures the bizarre situation perfectly! Such an odd place to choose to position themselves – it’s a very small area with everyone focused on the walking or the sea-faring bit definitely not the praying! But they are definitely less in-your-face than the red t-shirt wearers of ‘Faith’ who we’ve got a bit cross at for years!
Kate Harrison
October 27, 2023Two Jehovah’s Witness ladies used to regularly visit my mum (a Catholic). I was there one day and let them in, assuming they were friends, which in a way they were. After a cup of tea (which apparently one of the ladies usually made!) and a chat about life and shoes, they left. Mum said they had called regularly when she was ill and offered any help needed. She always took the leaflets but there was rarely any discussion of religion. Just as well as Mum could quote scripture if required. As an atheist, I thought it was a good demonstration of what Christianity should be.