or anything in between, I have no defenses. There was a woman near me, obviously mentally ill, who was railing against an invisible person with whom she clearly had a long-standing argument. Her anger was palpable, as was her anguish. The screaming! I could only assume this was a repeat performance, one in which her rage never dissipates. What to make of such moments?

I was reminded of Denis Johnson’s short story, “Car Crash While Hitchhiking,” in which the narrator, buzzed out on speed and hash, hitches a ride late one rainy night in western Missouri with a family—a man, woman, and their infant son—and they end up crashing into another car driven by a man who dies as a result. Having stumbled out of the one car, andthose connecting the New Testament with the Old. I hope to follow the Lord's Prayer out into another context, which might be called the contextus alienus.

Luke helps us to understand the overall significance of the Lord’s Prayer, as he connects it to the desert asceticism of John the Baptist. According to Luke, the disciples approached Jesus, who had been praying contemplatively and alone, and asked him to teach them how to pray in the manner of John the Baptist. Then follows Luke’s shorter version of the Lord’s Prayer. John had taught the coming of the Kingdom of God, preaching repentance and baptism. The Johannine tradition was also associated with periods of testing and trial by demonic forces in the wilderness. Jesus was also tempted, after a period of