6:34pm PDT. I am still here. My boys are still here. Yet one more apocalypse that has not been met by Our Father and the Universe. That’s ok, there will be another shot at it next year.
I have to say, like most of my friends on FB, I chuckle at this latest ‘Rapture’ hysteria and post snarky comments about it. Can you imagine if Rapture headlines made the community news back in Salem, MA in the 1660s? One word: Bedlam. Think of the fun they would have had finding people to scapegoat for the failure of The Lord to have seized the prayerful and brought them to Heaven straightaway.
But seriously, if Revelations was right, and there really is going to be a rapture, we will never be able to predict when that will be. It’s sheer hubris to believe you can predict/know the date all the ‘saved’ will ascend or when this world will end. In fact, predicting is a paltry tool for religious leaders of old to scare the people into living a more wholesome life…ahem, we may be different now in 2010, but the same kinds of tactics are used to keep the people under control.
I don’t believe any of the Big Five religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) can know or describe the unknowable. These lofty religions have made constructs for us to live our lives with less worry. It’s comforting to have a structure for good/bad and life/death. But we will never know the truth, until presumably, we pass on into the place past our lives.
This Rapturous Weekend I am inclined to bathe in the afternoon sunlight as it filters through the curtains, to eat strawberries until they stain my fingers, and giggle with my boys as though it might all be over in a moment. But that’s just it. We only have this moment. If there is any message the Rapture waiters can provide, it might be that waiting is counterproductive. Forget about The Rapture. We will always live with uncertainty. Live now and love with abandon.
If you need help with the task above, read Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.
Happy May 21st 2010!
Bridget Kelley-Lossada 