40 days & 40 nights

I love the Old Testament, because the Old Testament, it's this hodge podge of different literary forms collected over the course of centuries, but the same themes keep coming through. Philosophically, idealogically, it's very consistent.

And one of the most consistent themes you see in the Old Testament, and this is something that you need to know, it's easy, so easy to forget this as you just go through your life day by day, but it's absolutely vital that you know this … this unalterable truth that you see expressed in the Old Testament over and over again.

Genesis, Exodus, Job. It's everywhere in the Old Testament.

The unavoidable, undeniable, immutable fact that Things Can Always Get Worse.

Think about it. When Moses is talking to the Pharoah, and he says "OK, Pharaoh, I turned the river into blood, I sent you grasshoppers, frogs, revolting diseases, you gonna let my people go?"

And Pharoah says "Oh, yeah. I'm gonna let your people go to the Promised Land now? Right. Like you could possibly make things any worse."

And then there's Lot's wife, right? I'm sure the last thing she thought before she turned into a pillar of salt was "I'll just take one last look. What can it hurt? My whole neighborhood is getting blown to smithereens. It's not like things could get any worse."

And remember Jonah? He was supposed to go tell the people of Nineveh to repent, right? But what happened? He said "Forget that action. I'm gonna run away where The Big Guy Upstairs can't find me. He's gonna send me to Nineveh? No way. I'm gonna lam it. Because being sent to Nineveh, man. Nothing could be worse than that!"

Next thing you know Jonah's a dim sum for The World's Biggest Halibut.

But like I say, it's easy to forget about all that. A lot of times we live our lives as if things can't get worse. We let our guard down. We say "I can stop paying attention. I can relax. 'Cause things are as bad as they're gonna get. Things aren't gonna get worse."

And generally speaking, that's when you can expect the skies to open up and the Heavenly Smackdown to descend upon you.

We've had so much rain in El Cerrito, in the whole Bay Area. Last month we set a new record for most rainy days in March. We're worried about flooding, soil erosion, mudslides. I was out in the backyard this weekend, we've got water ponding out there, which is a real problem because it can attract mosquitoes, and it's really hard to get the weeds under control in these conditions. The mulch washes away, and a lot of the yard has turned swampy, so it's hard to get around.

So I was out there working in the yard this weekend. I filled up a planting bed with mud and horse manure and planted potatoes, which is about all the planting I could manage because it's really just like this big overgrown marsh out there, and all the time I'm thinking to myself "Things just can't get any worse. Nope. They just can't. Impossible."

Then I got back inside, reached into my pocket, and realized that my keys were missing.

I figure the best case scenario is I dropped them in the horse manure.

Kurt "big daddy" True
4 april 2006