Originally posted: 6/1/2010
I was sitting outside with my mother last night, enjoying the gloaming after a pleasant and peaceful Memorial Day barbecue, when it suddenly occurred to both of us to look for the Last Judgement chapters of the Gospels. We read a passage out of Mark about apocalyptic earthquakes, famine, and destruction — “When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.” I think I just laughed but it was nervous laughter. At no other time in my life have those words sounded so apt for the times. And that freaked me out
But I was already freaked out. I had a mini nervous breakdown this weekend, created by a variety of factors — exhaustion, stress, Gulf oil spill disaster, financial market weirdness, strange storms that take down trees, and probably most of all, the need I’ve felt to continue to carry on with my life as though nothing were happening.
Fact is, I couldn’t do it. I had to stop and say, what the hell is up with all this? This is crazy! I felt like that Beal guy in Network. I wanted to yell and rant and cry and who knows what else. In fact, I did none of those things. Mostly, I slept. And I meditated. (God is a man and a woman at the same time. God is good and looks like the sun….. Just thought I’d mention it. 😉
Also, I’ve been having strange thoughts. I thought one day that if there were a Tea Party movement for normal people, I might join. And then I thought, “what does it say about me that I can even formulate that thought?” Just by the by, I’m going to posit an answer — frustration.
I know I’m not supposed to believe in the End Times, but the ones we’re in resemble them to an unnerving degree. Even without Bible prophesy, the world these days looks scarily out of control on many levels — climate, economics, political instability, corporate and financial power. Whence all this chaos?
Of course we all know answers to that question. Many of us can quote them chapter and verse. But despite how much we know, there still seems to be a disconnect between what we know and what we feel empowered to do with that knowledge. What do most of us do each day? We get up, ‘don the chains’ of modern society, and do what we have to do to get by. (I accidentally typed ‘buy’ there, go figure.)
My Freudian slip raises another question. What if the problem is the words we use to describe our reality? What if it’s the stories we tell ourselves and hear told by others? What if those stories are wrong and don’t really describe the real world at all?
Increasingly, the information reported by mainstream news bothers me because it feels like such a mind f—. I yell at the news all the time. I scoff at it. I snear. But my contempt for the sources of those stories doesn’t change the fact that people are being snowed by giant lies that make it impossible for people to find a better way. So we don’t and here comes the freight train….
I have a friend whose theory is that we should put all the bad things in a box and never let them out. I’m no good at that. I find that the things I put in the box always want to come out and will do so, on their own, unless I keep the lid clamped down very tightly. And that’s a lot of work, so sometimes, I relax my guard and out they come! like the inhabitants of Opus’ Anxiety Closet. Nevertheless, I do practice avoidance. For instance, I’m fine as long as I don’t think about anything. But sooner or later, I know I’m going to have to, and that makes me nervous.
Sages say that we should face our fears. Would it help to acknowledge what is really going on and just how out of whack things are? Would that make things less surreal? Or should we tune it out, and “party like it’s 1999,” as Prince suggests? We could always surrender, holler uncle, say “I quit!” Conversely, we could “fight them on the beaches,” in the fields, the streets, the hills, a la Winston Churchill. So many things we could do, if we only knew how we really feel instead of just how we think we’re supposed to feel.
Which brings me back to awareness of what is. Without that, we’re lost and right now, I feel we’re being deliberately confused to keep us from grasping the full magnitude of what’s happening to us, across the globe. How to get unconfused is another matter, but hopefully we’ll figure it out. For me in this moment, slower is better, less is more, love is the answer. But I can’t speak for anyone else. I just know, the status quo is not working for me.
