Have Bible, will travel
Seen on the Red Line around 2 p.m., riding north from the Loop:
A 30-ish guy reading the Book of Revelations from the Bible. OK. Cool. Certainly not the first time I've seen someone reading the Bible on the CTA.
But the Bible was in a black portfolio of sorts. And as he got up to leave at Grand, he closed the portfolio, zipped it up, then folded a flap down, and buckled down the flap. He pulled out a strap and flung the strap over his shoulder.
It looked like a mini-messenger bag. Kinda cool, actually.
I bet he sleeps with it, too.
Posted by: jz | December 09, 2004 at 08:08 AM
Have Bible, will travel!
Posted by: Margaret | December 09, 2004 at 08:45 AM
I swear I put in the above comment without realizing that the title of Kevin's post was the same. Really. Do you believe me?
Posted by: Margaret | December 09, 2004 at 11:38 AM
Really Margaret, I do believe you. What's funny to me is how we often don't read everything -- you know, just skim. And I'm as guilty as the next one on that count. Perhaps that's what you were doing here? Whatever it was, it did make me chuckle and laughing is good!
Posted by: Kevin | December 09, 2004 at 03:33 PM
That's not so strange. Christian bookstores seem to keep up with trends in book bags, book covers, etc., so I'm not surprised there's a messenger-bag thing for Bibles.
I know someone who wanted to pray from his breviary (thick Bible-like prayer book) on public transit but was for some reason embarrassed to haul the book out because it had shiny gold page edges and a leather cover. I don't know if he thought people would think he was going to stand up and preach or whether he thought someone would see that and start preaching to him. Then they'd get a look at the book and find out it's not a Bible (gasp!) and that's it's Catholic (double gasp!).
Actually, that's pretty paranoid. I've seen plenty of people read quietly from shiny gold-edged Bibles, Korans, siddurs, breviaries, or whatever, and nobody bothered about it one way or the other.
Posted by: Scott | December 09, 2004 at 04:01 PM