Jonah and Me

"Now the LORD provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights."

-Jonah 1: 17

Looking out from 407 this morning and reflecting on the sea and what I saw on my trip to the gym before sunrise.

As to the latter, I pulled into a parking lot with Trump stickers on bumpers around me. Tatted and jacked up young men all around, some speaking Spanish, crowded the machines. They helped make this awful thing happen two weeks ago. Two monitors spouting Fox News propaganda; no MSNBC.

On the way home I sit at a stop light behind a Gadsden Flag license plate (why does Florida have such a thing?). Another beat up old SUV sported a Women for Trump bumper sticker as it hesitates at a stoplight and I considered ramming it before deciding I didn't want to scratch my truck.

A chiropractor on Fourth Street displays a digital business sign with his image in his clinic, wearing a t-shirt proclaiming him "MAGA Man".

I hate coming here. To quote the title of one of my favorite books, chronicling a similar loss, the place that I loved is gone. I am now in the belly of the beast.

Of course, analogizing with Jonah carries a certain irony. God sent the whale to swallow him because he left Nineveh in disgust rather than following Yahweh's orders to go there and preach repentance. The whale then pukes up the prophet so he can go back and do as the Lord commanded, and Nineveh repents. This in turn disgusts Jonah, who wanted to see them incinerated OT style, and Elohim nearly kills him a second time just for being such an ass.

Maybe I need to reflect on all that, as I look forward to getting out of here in a few days and back to the sane, cold north.

Back to work. I have a crazy MAGA client calling in a few minutes, then another who can't afford to play the game and can't hear me when I tell her so arriving in the office for an in-person command performance by the lawyer she can't pay.

Happy Wednesday.