Great passage from the book "Nickel and Dimed." [View All]

[Bouncy Ball]

If you're not familiar with the book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to temporarily leave her life as a writer and journalist (and PhD) and become a low-wage worker in three different states for a couple of years, to see what it took to get by.

Well, at one point, she finds herself with nothing to do on a Saturday night and discovers a church called "Deliverance Church" (her comments on that name are hilarious) is having a tent revival.

Here's the end of her description:

The preaching goes on, interrupted with dutiful "amens." It would be nice if someone would read this sad-eyed crowd the Sermon on the Mount, accompanied by a rousing commentary on income inequality and the need for a hike in the minimum wage. But Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpse; the living man, the wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist, is never once mentioned, nor anything he ever had to say. Christ crucified rules, and it may be that the true business of modern Christianity is to crucify him again and again so that he can never get a word out of his mouth. I would like to stay around for the speaking in toungues, should it occur, but the mosquitoes, worked into a frenzy by all this talk of His blood, are launching a full-scale attack. I get up to leave, timing my exit for when the preacher's metronomic head movements have him looking the other way, and walk out to search for my car, half-expecting to find Jesus out there in the dark, gagged and tethered to a tent pole.

(end snippet)

Is THAT some great writing, or what? I have to say I wasn't expecting this book to have laugh out loud moments, but it does--it's VERY darkly funny.