Fear and Loathing in Jerusalem

Part One

We were somewhere around Jerusalem in the heart of the city when the Holy Spirit began to take hold. I remember saying something like, "I feel a bit lightheaded, maybe you should preach..." And suddenly, there was this terrible roar all around us like thunder, and the sky was full of what looked like tongues of fire, all swooping and descending upon us and diving around the Twelve, who were here tarrying just as the Lord had said. 

And a voice from Heaven was screaming, "HOLY JESUS-" and we were filled with a type of glory. 

Then it was quiet again. 

My scribe had taken his robe off to facilitate the endowment process. 

"What in heaven and Earth are all of you yelling about?" he muttered, staring into the sky with his eyes closed and covered with a yarmulke. 

I grabbed the Apostle Peter and said, "Never mind, it's your turn to preach."

It was not yet noon and we haven't even broken in to the best wine, a gift from the Lord before He ascended unto the Father. 

These would be tough times. Very soon, I knew that all of us would be completely twisted. But there was no going back and no time to rest. We would have to ride it out. The gathering for the fabulous annual Feast of Weeks was already under way, and we were commanded by Law to celebrate. A humble disciple of the Kingdom of God had given us room and board ... and I was, after all, a professional Apostle; so I had an obligation to cover the story, for good or for ill.

The disciples had also given us three hundred shekels, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous ventures. The trunk of the upper room looked like a mobile Roman booty caravan. We had two bags of cannabis incense, seventy five loaves of consecrated unleavened bread, five skins of poppy juice, a salt shaker full of Harmal, and a whole world of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, and laughers courtesy of the Physician Luke. We also had a case of beer, two jugs of wine, and a pint of raw Blue Lotus.

All this had been rounded up the night before, in a frenzy of high speed traveling all over Iudea Province – from Galilee to Capernaum, we picked up everything we could get our hands on. 

Not that we needed all that for the tarrying, but once you get locked into a serious sacrament collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.

The only thing that really worried me was the Blue Lotus. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of a Blue Lotus binge - just ask the Egyptians. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next meal. We had sampled almost everything else, and now – yes, it was time for a long snort of Blue Lotus. And then pray the next hundred minutes in a horrible, slobbering sort of spastic stupor. The only way to keep alert on Blue Lotus is to do up a lot of Divine Wine – not all at once, but steadily, just enough to maintain the focus.

"Man, this is the way to tarry," said my scribe. He leaned over to recite a Psalm, humming along with the rhythm section and kind of moaning the words: "Lord ... my shepherd ... not want ... make me to lie down..." Makes you to lie down? You poor fool! Wait till you see those God-blessed tongues of fire. I could barely hear the chanting of the crowds outside... slumped over on the far side of the seat, grappling with an Isaiah scroll. That was the only physical scripture we had, so we read it constantly, over and over, as a kind of demented counterpoint to the Psalms. And also to maintain our rhythm on this tarry. A constant speed is good for maintaining lucidity– and for some reason that seemed important at the time.

My scribe saw the crowds long before I did. "Lets give these people the Gospel," Peter said, and before I could mount any argument he was standing on the roof of the building with the rest of the Apostles, yelling in a variety of languages, ready to start screaming about Jesus and these poor people were running up to the building with big grins on their faces saying, "Aren't all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt, parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs - we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!" Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, "What does this mean?"