facing into the apocalypse...

Most days I do not write political posts. To be honest, life is too short and my time on this grand planet is increasingly limited. But let's be clear: these are days that exhaust our souls and break open our hearts. They are an ever-flowing cascade of grief and fear mixed with moments of solace and sometimes even beauty. I currently experience our four horsemen of the apocalypse as: the pandemic, the ongoing destruction of Mother Earth, political gridlock in our nation's capitol, and the current know-nothing venom of right-wing activists who hate people of color, creative women, and the LGBTQ+ community with an unholy paranoia.

PANDEMIC

"The coronavirus pandemic" notes the NY Times, "has affected our lives, our economy and nearly every corner of the globe. More than 3.74 billion people worldwide have received a dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, equal to about 48.7 percent of the world population. However, there are stark gaps between richer and poorer nations. The United States has surpassed 700,000 known Covid-19 deaths, making the coronavirus pandemic the deadliest in American history. Diana Butler Bass sensed a connection between these incomprehensible deaths and a new NETFLIX show, "Midnight Mass." She writes: "Over the last few days, I spent seven hours watching "Midnight Mass" (which is) done in the genre of horror (which I generally eschew), Midnight Mass follows a group of (mostly) church people whose world is collapsing - and the choices they make when facing the last things. At its heart are questions: Is Christianity about a sacrifice for the life of the world or a sacrifice for personal salvation? Is it about the power of wisdom or the power of eternal life? And how do faithful people choose the right way when facing apocalypse?" 

MOTHER EARTH'S DESTRUCTION

Climate activist, Greta Thunberg, was recently interviewed by YES Magazine. Her take on the devastation of our planet was characteristically blunt and honest: I think that you can objectively say that the climate crisis is not being treated as an emergency, especially when you compare to COVID in many parts of the world. The climate crisis is not being treated as an emergency, and it never has... We need to change social norms, and we need to change what we perceive as the crisis, and what we perceive as being normal. But one thing that it will take is honesty. We need to be honest about what we are doing and we need to be brave in order to confront that, in order to be able to change things. And it will take the people who have a platform, whether it is media, people in power, or just people who are influential, that they use that platform to communicate that we are in a crisis. Because if we do not start to treat the crisis like a crisis, then the people around us will not understand that we are in an emergency. 

POLIGICAL GRIDLOCK (from Heather Cox Richardson's writing)

Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told his colleagues that on Monday evening he plans to bring up the Freedom to Vote Act and to try to get it through the Senate. The Republicans are determined not to let Democrats level the electoral playing field. While Democrats in the House, where legislation can pass with a simple majority vote, have passed voting rights laws, Democrats in the Senate have to deal with the filibuster, which enables senators in the minority to block legislation unless the Democrats can muster 60 votes. Republicans are dead set against voting rights laws. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has called voting reform “a solution in search of a problem,” driven by “coordinated lies about commonsense election laws that various states have passed.” Republicans are trying to regain control of the government by making sure their opponents can’t vote, while Democrats are trying to level a badly tilted playing field. If the Democrats do not succeed in passing a voting rights law, we can expect America to become a one-party state that, at best, will look much like the American South did between 1876 and 1964. Our nation will no longer be a democracy.

RIGHT WING DOMESTIC TERRORISM (from NY Times)

The American flag became a blunt instrument in the bearded man’s hands. Wielding the flagpole like an ax, he swung once, twice, three times, to beat a police officer being dragged down the steps of a United States Capitol under siege. Other officers also fell under mob attack, while the rest fought to keep the hordes from storming the Capitol and upending the routine transfer of power. Sprayed chemicals choked the air, projectiles flew overhead and the unbridled roars formed a battle-cry din — all as a woman lay dying beneath the jostling scrum of the Jan. 6 riot... nine months removed from the mayhem, Republicans bound to former President Donald J. Trump’s unfounded assertion that the 2020 election was stolen from him have all but wished the day away: blocking the creation of a bipartisan investigative commission; blaming antifa, or Democrats, or the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and minimizing the overwhelming video evidence. Even so, a reckoning is underway, as prosecutors and congressional investigators seek to understand how a political rally devolved into an assault on the citadel of American democracy and those who guard it. They are drilling down on whether the riot was organized and what roles were played by far-right extremist groups, various Trump supporters and Mr. Trump himself.

At the close of the Dr. Bass article, she notes that people of faith often wonder what is the right way to face when staring into the abyss of the apocalypse? She writes:

Some Christians argue there is no choice. That our only choice is to turn our backs on a fraying, fractured, evil world and form an exclusive community of true believers - who can, when called upon, destroy the wicked and restore godly society. That’s the vision laid out by Rod Dreher in a book originally published in 2017, The Benedict Option, where he urges Christians to reimpose “Christian belief and Christian culture” to save the west. (Another choice exists, however as Patrick Henry reiterates in his book Benedictine Options.) It is the call to love and live here and now in a fully human way, “a world-embracing monastic spirit” of faith that is “experimental, rhythmical, communal, ecumenical, and ‘narrational.’” While Dreher sees ours as “a world growing cold, dead, and dark,” Patrick insists that “Benedictine options are for a world of many colors” - aglow with laughter and lightness and love. “What, finally, is the consequence of implementing Benedictine options? It’s the opposite of The Benedict Option’s withdrawal. . . It’s being alert to what God says in Isaiah (43:19): ‘I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?’ The ‘new thing’ appears in the world - the whole world - that Benedict saw in his vision. Benedictines are connoisseurs of surprise.”

Dr. Bass then notes what I have been advocating for the past few years: We can choose to turn away from the end of the world, in the process, turn ourselves into monsters - or turn toward it and see a loving, healing, forgiving, and hospitable God even there. When we fear we’ve reached the end. We have choices. Surprises await.

I rather like the way Carrie Newcomer puts this in a recent poem: "I'm Learning to Sit with Not Knowing."

I'm learning to sit with not knowing.

Even when my restless mind begins jumping

From a worried

What next?

To a frightened

What if?

To a hard edged and impatient,

Why aren't you already there?

I'm learning to sit and listen

To pat myself on the knee,

Lay my hand on my heart,

Take a deep breath,

And laugh at myself.

To befriend my mistakes,

Especially the ones,

That show me how

I most need to change.

I'm learning to sit with whatever comes

*Even though I'm a planner.)

Because so much of this life

Can't be measured or predicted.

Because wonder and suffering visit

When we least expect

And rarely in equal measure.

I'm learning to sit with

What I might never know

Might never learn,

Might never heal.

I'm learning to sit with

What might waltz in and surprise me,

Might crash into my days,

With unspeakable sorrow

Or uncontainable delight.

I'm learning to sit with not knowing.

So, as beloved Walter Croinkite of blessed memory used to say: That's the way it is: Sunday, October 17, 2021.