Apocalyse? ... yes

Here's another piece I submitted (minus the pics) to the UPI Religion and Spirituality page that didn't get published. Let me know your thoughts... ___________________________________________________

“Will it be warm? Will it be bright? Will there be a flash of light?” These are the opening lines of a beautiful song my cousin wrote called End of the World. Actually I am not quite sure that is the title but it seems to be a love song written to someone at the end of the world. There seem to be many, many traditions around the world expecting some sort of end to the world, as we know it. And it is always some time in the future but always soon just around the corner. But why shouldn’t the “end of days” be happening now? Why can’t it be that we are living in the entropic soup of the long expected apocalypse right now? How many more horrors do we have to witness before it is actually counted as the “end of the world”? What is the correct number of atrocities that we have to be able to ignore or not feel because we have been too busy numbing ourselves to be able to say that we have now entered the time of “unimaginable horrors”? How could we not all be collectively nodding our heads in agreement that we are in fact, right now living through the apocalypse and all of its horrors?

I am not going to try to name these hideous things that happen daily all around us (Richard Hooper’s recent submission of Dec 6 had a paragraph that summarized some of these). I think we can all name quite a few even if it does take a few seconds to retrieve through each of our shields of numbness or justification. But the fact is that we escorted ourselves into this “time of the end” quite some time ago. It has crept in and caught us unaware, caught us sleeping, napping in the glare of our TVs. It is like we are all blindly standing in the middle of the once beautiful, shining city we built and which due to the decay of its basic foundation is crashing, smashing, exploding all around us taking some of us with them in the process. This must to be the time of the end referred to in traditions across the globe.

But now having offered this negative paint stroke, I would like to try and describe another process that is happening simultaneously. There is something else going on. Parallel to this decay is the incredible explosion of growth and renewal popping up from between the rubble and ruin of the crumbling we see all around us. The pain of the crumbling of the old structures is allowing us to attain to an incredible new level of awareness of those around us. This pain has thrown together large groups of folks who never had dealings and who have been forced to recognize each other and start addressing differences that had previously been ignored completely.

The freeing and recognition of basic rights of groups of people that have been beaten down, oppressed and denied equality for eons globally based on skin color, gender, ethnicity or religious convictions. Countless numbers of previously exploited groups of now at least have protection by law. This is something unheard of previously, laughed and scoffed at by their oppressors. It is happening now all around us.

Cooperation on a scale never seen before has been “suddenly” thrust on all of us. Our economic interdependence is obvious; a housing slump here in the US has affected banks worldwide. Oil prices go up and everybody feels the crunch. Increased cooperation is necessary. Natural disasters are events that know no borders and with the ability to instantly communicate through voice, images and video to any one on the globe we are made immediately aware of the pain and suffering caused by these events. Again, an increase in cooperation is necessary. More data and evidence is presented daily on global warming and again a solution to the problem requires more cooperation.

Technological advances are improving the quality of our lives and sculpting the earth, as we know it, into a whole new earth. These advances that are extending our lives, keeping our drinking water clean, allowing us to travel, freeing some of our time, and providing us with countless tools being used to better our lives has also increased the quality and frequency of the interactions with other people around the globe. This increase in interaction is allowing us to slowly realize that we are all undeniably part of one human family.

Of course the media will immediately remind us of all examples of bloody failures of this great coming together, but I think the successes far outweigh these failures. All these upheavals are just part of the collapse of old structures and the birth of a new awareness. It is an awareness that is slowly seeping into all of our lives whether we like it or not that we really are part of one human family and it really is one little planet we all have to live on and learn to share. It is the awareness of oneness.

In referring to this awareness, Baha’u’llah, the prophet founder of the Baha’i Faith said, “Blessed and happy is he that ariseth to promote the best interests of the peoples and kindreds of the earth. In another passage He hath proclaimed: It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah, p. 167)

So yes, I think we are all currently living through the apocalypse or “time of the end” predicted in traditions through out the world. And yes we are all in quite a lot of pain (or running from it) but this is all part of the process that ends a life as we have known it and ushers in the birth of a new world promised to us in those same traditions. We live on one globe and we are part of one, single human family and it is inevitable that we have some growing pains while trying to figure it all out.