"Hell is other people."
-Jean Paul Sartre
I find myself being serenaded with the homogenous, auto-tuned musical sludge that is the preferred background noise of the 30-ish, marginally educated, service economy employed crowd in places like Key West. The young lady in the next room, separated only by a common door in case we were to desire some sort of in-person meeting, is over there getting ready for her day, listening to the same hypnotically awful melodies she shared with us at 1:30 in the morning when she returned to her room in her cups and cranked the tunes and started jabbering on her phone in a nasally voice Peg and I both agreed could act as a form of birth control. Peg beat on the door. She beat back. I wanted to take her life.
Now she's switched to rap. Of course.
My blood pressure has crept back up into the yellow range, if not the red. I can't blame the ditz next door, however. No exercise, a little too much strong drink at night with P, suppers that are probably loaded with salt, being served in a restaurant and all. It'll be nice to get back to P's cooking, and to one of our homes. Hotel living is best experienced in small doses.
I'm also riding a huge wave of stress over one of my law partners picking an unnecessary and deeply personal fight with a couple lawyers in another firm I've counted as friends for years now. We used to refer work back-and-forth, but the rancor has reached the point that their very large firm has decided to cut ties with ours. No more referrals. No more mediations. I shake my head at both sides, and in the end I'm the only one who lost something of value in this imbroglio.
But I've stuck with my routine to the extent that's possible working out of a hotel room for a week. I read the advance sheets each morning to keep up with new cases being decided in Florida. That used to be a daily discipline for me, but died in the hurricane until I revived it recently.
And I've stuck to my morning prayer and readings, following either the lectionary's primary or complementary texts each morning before diving into work.
The practice has left me thinking again about the stark contrast between the vengeful bloodbath that is the Hebrew Bible and the grace and kindness one finds throughout the New Testament. Of course it's not that simple--my good friend Jane, a polymath who can switch seamlessly between explaining an arcane bit of math or engineering and pointing out an interesting wrinkle in the original Hebrew used in Isaiah, once brought to Sunday School a series of Bible passages we were asked to identify as from the Old or the New Testament. The point of the exercise was borne out when we all quickly identified the "love" based passages as from the NT, when most were in fact from the Old, while some of the more angry and threatening verbiage came straight from Paul, or Jesus himself. It's not that simple, not a black-and-white contrast between the violent narrative of the Twelve Tribes and the Gospel revelation of a loving God.
That said, every day's reading reminds me that there really is what one might call a difference in tone between the two.
For instance, this morning's passage from the 66th Psalm, admittedly a mere snippet, is filled with the joy of deliverance and relationship with God:
Praise our God, O peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard;
he has preserved our lives and kept our feet from slipping.
But then we arrive at a reading from Jeremiah, which is a little less chipper:
The sound of a cry comes from Babylon, the sound of great destruction from the land of the Babylonians.
The LORD will destroy Babylon; he will silence her noisy din. Waves [of enemies] will rage like great waters; the roar of their voices will resound.
A destroyer will come against Babylon; her warriors will be captured, and their bows will be broken. For the LORD is a God of retribution; he will repay in full.
And the lectionary editor has sanitized this rant for us--there's much worse on either side of it, with the Lord Almighty Himself describing how he plans to murder women and children, the old and infirm.
I know, I know. Jeremiah speaks from a time of rage, a time when Jewish identity was nearly eradicated by the conquering Babylonians, a national insult the Hebrews would endure over and over. But you won't find this sort of bloodlust anywhere in the Gospels. There really is a difference between the revealed truth maybe six centuries before Jesus walked the earth, and the message he brought and we've rather unevenly lived into ever since.
It's an interesting thought problem--what if Jesus had been raised as a nice Hellenistic kid instead of what appears likely to have been in a household full of Jewish religious fanatics? What if we had the message of Christianity without all the baggage of the Hebrew Bible? Would such a theology even be possible?
I guess I ponder this as I watch the religious right drag our country back several centuries, all the while pounding us with scripture that is almost entirely from the Old Testament. With a few phylactery wearing exceptions, my Jewish friends have long since abandoned a literalist, fundamentalist approach to their scripture and tradition, teasing truths out of their sacred works through the insight of experience over the centuries. Our American version of Christianity mostly lacks that worldly, humble lens, preferring a triumphalist, graceless religion grounded in literalism and certitude. Nothing good seems to come of it.
How did I get off on that rant? Enough already, Donk. You sound as certain of your truths as the folks you're criticizing. Your little Woo Woo is no better than theirs.
God willing and blue skies ahead, I'll be flying my little Woo Woo, and Peg's as well, out of this place a little later, picking our way through the storms spinning off the tropical mess below Houston, and landing in Perry with time to hit golf balls and see friends. Olly olly oxen free. Or if the weather isn't quite that cooperative, we may hug the east coast until we're around the bad stuff and fly back to New York. Or if it's really bad, we may be stuck here for another night. It's all in God's hands at this point. I just need to be packed and ready. And prepared to accept whatever outcome the day brings.
Selah.
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