Revelation rant

from Jon Bill Swiftmahr’s commentary on Revelation (in the Incoherent series, published by Rantrage Press, 2014, p. 21) –

They’re just minding their own d--- business, the Laodiceans, when this shows up in the communal mailbox.

III. Write to the Laodiceans: Here is what I’m saying, the Amen, the Witness, the Beginning of everything –

   ¹⁵ I know how you are, not hot and not cold. Tepid.  ¹⁶ So because you are, lukewarm, I am spitting you out of my mouth.  ¹⁷ You say you’re rich and you don’t need much so you don’t need anything more. I say you just don’t know: you’re miserable, poor, blind, naked, in prison.  ¹⁸ So, let me tell you: I will sell you my gold and then you’ll be rich; I’ll sell you white robes I made, then you’ll have clothes; I’ll anoint your eyes with my salve, then you will see.  ¹⁹ I’m telling you because I love you, “Repent, you stupid lukewarm sh--s. Repent!”  ²⁰ Right now I’m standing at your door; I’m knocking, do you hear it? Then open it. I’ll come in. We’ll eat together.  ²¹ Pay attention and you can sit on the throne of the one that is going to judge the world and condemn to hell people like you, if you don’t repent. Selah.

Commentary

So, I’m up whether I want to be or not. I make my bed. I wasn’t going to, but I do. I stumble down the back stairs. I’m sitting at the kitchen table, cursing the cricket in my left ear. I’m no less angry than when I went to bed last night, and that anger was enough to keep me awake I don’t know how long.

          Crappy instant coffee, because I don't care enough to make real. A slice of toast. I wash my meds – except what I put up my nose – I wash my meds down my throat so they can lie in my stomach, swim in the coffee and the jagged shards of toast and the blades of anger swallowed through the night rather than spewed out of my mouth as John Patmos’ god, AMEN, did the poor Laodiceans, who like me were only trying to get along, practicing as best they could the moderation Aristotle had taught them and who was John that he knew better? – a cracked pot, religious fanatic, writing from his closet that all the world that hates him and has mistreated him all his miserable life is now is f--ked – now-and-ever-shall-be smoldering, catching flames that will be rising higher-higher, burning hotter-hotter, for d--- ever. “You’ll catch fire, soon enough, you sh---holes, and you’ll never stop burning. RIW (rest in [eternal] warfare.) Signed: Your friend, John P.

          Bite your tongue, after you’ve taken a deep breath, Laodiceans. Yes, breathe. Put the letter back in its envelope, put both in the shredder, put down your pen. Don’t write back. It can’t make matters better. You’re dealing with a loon; it could make it/him worse. Breathe. Not that you care anyway.

          I look out the window to see if the world really is coming to an end, if John Patmos was right and it is already smoldering at the edges and soon the ground will be like the fiery side of Mercury. The oceans won’t surge and wash over us, they’ll boil away; they’ll become dry as tinder, and the flames will wash through them, and the seas and the sky will be alight. But not yet. Right now it’s gray and lowering; I smell rain. I lift my cup to the Laodiceans and they return my salud: “Sometimes we get what we deserve, lukewarm and faithless servant.”