Friday, May 12, 2006

Spread the Word

Some of my OG readers may recall that, while I’m employed by The College Board, I work in rented office space owned by the American Bible Society (ABS). For the last five days the ABS staff, in honor of their 190th anniversary, has been reading from morning to midnight from the Bible. A stage was erected on Broadway and employees have been taking tag teamed turns reading The Good Book cover-to-cover. And there’s always a small gathering of employees taking praise breaks, loitering in front of the stage and following along in their own dog-eared copies.

It’s fucking humiliating b’c I have to pass by the lot of them and go into the bldg. five or six times a day amidst the glares of hell-bound passersby.

Last night, a rainstorm destroyed the stage. God: 1, ABS: zip. Ha! But the flock continues undeterred. The readers are now performing from a pulpit in the building’s glass-walled lobby. And their voices are being broadcast into the Midtown landscape. Just when I didn’t think it could get creepier… Granted, the mumbling hordes of dowdy men and women dressed from head to toe in various shades of khaki have dispersed. But the lot of it seems very David Blaine-y: a person behind glass, reading for days on end and God and man paying them no mind.

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