The Day is Approaching

Please See
Soulwork Toward Sunday : self-guided retreat
Proper 28 (year B), November 18, 2012
“Nothing Left But Love”
http://www.edgeofenclosure.org

Detail from the Bamberg Apocalypse, The Fall of Babylon, c.1020

As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”  -Mark 13:1-2

People on the East Coast of the United States have had a fore-taste of apocalypse recently. For many, the horror continues. Homes washed away or burned to the ground. Having to negotiate stairs in high rise buildings in complete darkness, no elevators, no heat. Hospitals evacuated – neonatal and ICU units with complicated equipment for each patient, the post-op patients getting themselves down flights of stairs, or the comatose, sick and immobile being slid gently down on plastic sleds. Back-up generators flooded, or run out of gas. No gas or oil. No deliveries. No sanitation pick-up. No credit card use and no ATM machines to get cash, no traffic lights, no public transportation, no food in the few markets that remain open. Cell phone and internet disrupted – so communication of distress is almost impossible. How very fragile our civilized life!

Stress brings out the best and worst of people. Heroes emerge from obscurity – wading through chest-high muck to ferry people to a waiting fire truck, or walking long distances to get to hardest hit areas to bring food, water, to clean up, to get prescriptions filled for the infirm. Occupy Wall Street dissidents use their organizing skills to become emergency care workers. Perfectly respectable people fight in gas lines and loot and cheat and hoard.

And thankfully governors and mayors publicly acknowledge that the infrastructure of our cities and shores have to be re-designed to accommodate climate change – waking up to an apocalypse of our own making. Will the rest of us rise to the challenge of the radical change in life-style required of us?

“Watch. You do not know the day or hour…”. The Day is approaching.

-Suzanne