Bling Bling in the ATL

So heres a shocker: last night I went to bible study with Ben, the boy. Janey, Ben's neighbor was the lovely host. Janey's a very hip southern girl who has recently separated from her husband and decided she needs spiritual healing. So she's started meditating and invited her friends to come round last night to share the god-love, or something. I've been to bible studys before, actually one, also in Georgia - go figure - and it was really, really nice. Nobody pressured me and at the end they prayed for me and I totally felt the love.

I was a little nervous about going to Janey's though. I'm unitarian universalist, Janeys only culturally christian, and Ben's Jewish. I wasn't sure who else was coming, but I knew the pretty blond coke addict from down the street was, and the whole concept for the evening wasn't quite coming together for me. But I figured that divorce is a tough, tough thing, so I'd better go and offer what spiritual healing I could summon anyways.

I got in late, didn't have time to change so I was stuck in my icky work suit. Mingling was mingling.. I was happy to see that Janeys cat was still kicking it - he's FIV positive, and for some reason walking by a few months ago I'd mistaken one of her painted pots in the garden for a kitty tombstone. I had a few glasses of wine, everyone was catching up and talking about how they quit smoking cigarettes, which just made me start fiending for one. Then Brie chimed in with, "wow, everyones quitting smoking. I quit doing coke everyday! Kidding..." at which point I went out to the patio and had a smoke. A couple people joined me.

Janey rounded us up into the living room. We did some singing, except nobody sang. Then Dia gave a little background info on the Bible. Dia's a certified pastor, which is a revelation in and of itself, but thats another story. Anyways, so he was running the show. Dia tells about who wrote which bits of the bible when, and which bits got dropped when by who, etc. etc. , how certain books got canonized by which denominations. I'm real curious about the Greek Orthodoxes because I had a lot of fun doing Easter in crete one year and I have a funny suspicion that everything I don't like about the practice christianity started with the pope. But that conversation didn't go to far.

Torah vs. Bible gathered a little more speed. We had Ben rooting for the God of Wrath, Janey saying she only likes the nicer, kinder god and wondering whether that can be considered faith, Dia rooting for the god of sin, rules and expectations, me rooting for narrative/textual interpretations. Finally Brie asks the critical question: 'So, Ben, is it that Jews don't believe in Jesus?'

Anyways, we all laughed. Brie looked really embarrased, but what could we do - it was a really stupid question - and so we moved on to the next topic. Dia asks everyone to talk about why they feel reading the bible is/isn't a worthwhile experience. Ben's response: Judges 21-23. We all flip through our books to Judges 21, and its about Benjamin gettin' wives. Lots of 'em. Goof.

Alright, I'm tired so I'm going to sum up. Last night was really really really funny, and touching, but also super painful. The bible, like most major religious texts I've encountered, is not an easy book by far. Its like Finnegans wake. Or Mason Dixon. And its probably best read in the original hebrew/ aramaic/ greek. And we were all sitting around, coming up with ideas about god and ways of reading and we just don't have the education or the practice or the learning to really approach the text. In a way, we were lucky, because our ignorance united us. We got into our differing beliefs a little bit last night, and luckily I don't think anyone really caught on to the fact that the differences we were outlining are the kind of stuff that people fight wars over, burn houses over, lose elections over, ruin marriages over, etc. etc. I have no idea how that group of people can sit together and energize and bond the way people energize bond when they're all praying together. Its just not really possible. All I could think about how this is exactly the problem with the UU church - it lacks a unified spiritual community. For me, its pretty impossibe to find even a small one.

Anyways. I got feeling way overextended and extremely hollow at the end, and I sat on the couch by myself for a few minutes. Ben checked in on me, and I told him my blood sugar was crashing and I just felt like petting the FIV infected cat by myself.

Then we left, went to the bar, had half BBQ chicken, fried okra and corn on the cob. And margaritas. Bible studys happening again Wednesday, I'll let you know if I go.