Matthew 3:10 The ax is already at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be chopped down and tossed into the fire.
I am tired of apocalypticism. Two weeks of prophecies of fire and destruction seem plenty, don’t they?
And yet, they keep coming – in the scripture and in the real world.
My urge has been to stick close to the ground. I don’t mean hiding out, though that possibility has certainly crept in, too. I mean weathering apocalyptic eras by learning from the people who weather apocalypses day in and day out. The hysteria of friends and colleagues is exhausting. So is the turbo-charged political energy and commitment. It feels like that January 2 crowd at the gym: newly committed to a program that will last all of three weeks.
No, I want to learn about living in apocalypse from the people who have learned to do it long-term. I want to learn what it means to live in the face of crumbling infrastructure and destructive policies from people who have done that for generations.
I want to get low to the ground, practice downward mobility and abdication of privilege. I want to know the time-tested wisdom of people who have always lived outside the circle of white American middle-class exceptionalism.
That means: most of the world throughout most of history.
I heard yesterday that if we were to translate the energy required to run an American house for one twenty-four hour period, it would take 40 people working 8 hour shifts to generate that kind of power. And, the thing is: somewhere – hidden from my view – at least that many people are working at least that many hours to make my lifestyle possible. How is that different, the friend who shared this anecdote asked, from slavery?
The world has always been ending.
And there is a way to live with that reality, a way to live inside that reality with the hope and the joy of the new earth and the new heaven. It’s just that my particular ancestors ended up not needing the wisdom of that, and it got discarded somewhere along the way. Others have it, share it, live it. It’s just a matter of paying the right kind of attention in the right kind of places.
From Jan Richardson:
Blessing When the World is Ending
Look, the world
is always ending
somewhere.
Somewhere
the sun has come
crashing down.
Somewhere
it has gone
completely dark.
Somewhere
it has ended
with the gun,
the knife,
the fist.
Somewhere
it has ended
with the slammed door,
the shattered hope.
Somewhere
it has ended
with the utter quiet
that follows the news
from the phone,
the television,
the hospital room.
Somewhere
it has ended
with a tenderness
that will break
your heart.
But, listen,
this blessing means
to be anything
but morose.
It has not come
to cause despair.
It is simply here
because there is nothing
a blessing
is better suited for
than an ending,
nothing that cries out more
for a blessing
than when a world
is falling apart.
This blessing
will not fix you,
will not mend you,
will not give you
false comfort;
it will not talk to you
about one door opening
when another one closes.
It will simply
sit itself beside you
among the shards
and gently turn your face
toward the direction
from which the light
will come,
gathering itself
about you
as the world begins
again.
—Jan Richardson
