Words are Medicine

The other day a friend of mine announced to me the date of the end of the world: December 2012.

I asked her, “How do you know that?”

”It’s the Mayan calendar,” she answered as if that were proof enough.

After listening to her talk about bomb shelters and potassium iodide (for protection of the thyroid against radiation poisoning) I began to consider how filled our culture is with these dire predictions.

There are all the evangelical shows on the Apocalypse, the disaster shows (climate change, super-volcanoes, tsunamis that will wipe out the Eastern seaboard of the U.S.), FEMA alerts, and commercials by the insurance industry. And just in case that doesn’t make you afraid enough, there’s always the pharmaceutical industry to warn us about the next pandemic.

For a long time I had been afraid. Before I came to know that salvation and grace were not only possible but available in the present moment, I was an afraid person almost at a constitutional level. The ads and the preachers and the shows resonated with the fear of death that was already there.

For a long time—especially after 9/11 (I had volunteered with NYPD down there days after the attack)—I admit I seriously considered building a bomb shelter or running into the mountains. And in considering all the possibilities in reality (where to build it, what to take with me, how to find food) I realized after much unnecessary heartache that there was no place to run because the “end” they were predicting was meaningless. I had been afraid of death and had let their fear mongering move me because I identified myself with my body and my possessions.

It was truly a moment of grace that brought me out of that trance.

Once I had accepted that there was no way out but out, my prayers changed. And as I said, this was pure grace. It was certainly no doing of my own because I can still get scared and I am still a creature of wants and I know I'm as fallen as everything else in this universe. I am still attached to my husband and my dogs and the mountains I wake up to every morning. I love my life. But I know it’s a terminal case.

So, instead of asking God to save me from this and give me that or keep me healthy, it became simpler: "Take us home. Save our souls. Save all your creatures. Have mercy." Period. There's really nothing else to ask for because eventually–whether it's Mayan mayhem or Swine Flu–something will end the tyranny of flesh for us.

And so it is. And so it shall be.

After the class I kept thinking of the last book of C.S. Lewis’s series on Narnia when Edmund, Peter and Lucy believe that all the old worlds have ended and they are in a new place. They look around, trying to get their bearings and when they are too confused to make any sense of it all, Farsight the Eagle spreads his wings, soars high into the air and says, “Kings and Queens, we have all been blind. We are only beginning to see where we are. From up there I have seen it all…Narnia is not dead. This is Narnia.”

And none of them understand the Eagle because they just saw the end of the Narnia they knew. It had been destroyed, mountain by mountain, tree by tree right before their very eyes. Lord Digory finally has to explain it to them:

“When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia, which has always been here and always will be here…And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream.”

So, in some ways, prediction doesn't matter. It's not like I walk around always peaceful. I want to live and I still sometimes want to know what's down around the next curve in the road. I move with all the waves of the ocean we're in. But when I remember that I live in the Shadow-lands and walk in dreams, it's easier to stay right where I am and wait for the moment when I hear the trumpets and some great voice telling me, “The dream has ended: this is the morning.”

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