When people are ready, it happens

5/6

Steve and Requiem drop in to see where we are with insurance visits. It has finally worked out that Rose’s mom will welcome Rose and Requiem for a month so they’re taking the bus to the Berkshires. 

Anna is sitting with Puppy out on the sidewalk near the bus stop. She’s got nothing good to say about the people she net going thorugh the church making plans. I’m guessing they weee Melisa’s people. I tell her I’ll look into it.

The St. Agnes volunteer boys are back and hard at work again, cleaning away.

P________ comes in. Her case has taken new and bizarre turns. The State Supreme Court has denied her appeal. At one point she gors into a rant about how they’re all, the judges, the lawyers, the landlords, Jewish. I tell her not to go there. Point out a latino and a Muslim on the judge list. She says, but the Jewish one’s in charge. I must speak the truth. Then she goes off on how the Bible says homosexulaity is an abomination and as a scientist, men with men has some kind of negative effect chemically. And my patience is running thin on this day. The pressure is getting to her. More stories of how they’re trying to kill her with rays and gases and....Thing is, they’re not only trying to evict her, they’re wanting her to pay back market rate rent in the neighborhood of $40000 AND the landlord’s legal fees. If a judge would ever listen to her for 5 minutes, they’d see she is crazy. But she refuses to agree to a psych eval, afraid they’ll put her in the loony bin...I call her attorney, put him on the line. Maybe there’s still something he can do, maybe. He wants $1500 up front to try. She may be crazy, but the rest of this is mad obscene crazy.

As she’s talking to me, Sekou has arrived early for our Bible Study. We’d like to go across the street for a coffee, but Jamie has arrived with two realtors, so I have to do the tour. Tell our story.  See what they might come up with.

Once again, a good mixed  group for Bible Study. After a recap, we headback into the first chapter of Mark again. Talk about what’s being signified. The levels of the text. How Jesus submits to baptism as an act of solidarity with us human beings. But also as a symbolic turning away from the system of domination and control as it is. Repent, meaning turn around.....go another direction... how the temptation time in the desert is like boot camp, Satan in the Lou Gossett/Samuel L. Jackson role. ....he was with the wild animals....Callie from the Bronx points out that he is at one with wild animals, not tame. Even with its resonance of Daniel in the lion’s den, or the peaceable kingdom images, the animals are wild. 

This is all necessary before Jesus is ready to pick up the mantle of his fallen  cousin, John the Baptist. He goes back to Galilee, that nowhere place of nowhere places to begin hs work. He calls out to working people, fishers, and they immediately respond. Callie says, they were ready...We’re talking chronos and kairos and she says, no when people are reeady, it happens. 

And Teddy and Steve talk about the people who just walked away from where they were to join Occupy.  Sekou talks about not taming Jesus, not disempowering the radicality of the witness here and what went into it. Rosa Parks didn’t just get tired and refuse to move from a bus seat, she had trained for months for that moment. We cannot dehistoricize Jesus or Martin ..or Rosa.

Steve and Teddy and Callie all see parallels with Occupy here and an opportunity for critical analysis of the Bible....and the movement...others ae just amazed at the thickness of the text...what is in every word...

Anna stays behind..to ask about the signifcance of fishers.. I’m going to have to look into that.

Even Bobby had a brilliant comment tonght....with a reference to Quaker Oats as a metaphor for instantly.

A good might. But the pressures are mounting. Walking home, I’m  not sure that I can  leave tomorrow to go to Louisville, as important as that meeting is. Walking up the street, I desperately need to talk to someone. And no one’s there.