It's the End of the World

The air is full of signs this morning.  A gusting breeze rises and falls, swirling the wind chimes hanging on the front of the Airstream; stirring the branches of the ubiquitous cottonwood tree that guards the front of my campsite.  The ground is littered with little yellow leaves dried up and curling on the gravel drive.

The sky is patches of sunlight framed by clouds that hold expectant rain and lightning and thunder.  Across the treetops I see a flash and then a roll of sound that starts like a low clearing of the throat then crescendos into a crash that reverberates and tumbles past my ears.

A raven glides past, left to right, just before the rain starts to drum my blue and white awning.  Yes . . . drumming . . . and I seem to hear the soft thump of the divine mother’s heart pulsing at the core of the planet.  This is a pause in the quickening that has seized all of existence; like the moments between the beats of your heart.

We are all counting backwards now – all embodying the spirit of the Heyoka – today, tomorrow, then the last day of the calendar – the end of time as we know it – the end of an age, they say – the destruction of the fourth world.  And what do we know of the fifth?  Nothing.  And we are striving to not create the next world in the image of the one which has died. 

I grew up in a family that celebrated the “end times”.  We looked forward to the end of the world as you would the coming of Christmas.  My parents were trapped in a cosmology that envisioned this life as a “veil of tears” that would not be lifted until this life was over. 

My father was literally trapped in a body that was a prison; racked with crippling rheumatoid arthritis.  He had a profound connection to spirit and a rich prayer life, but he misunderstood that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” means it is in your hand if you will only close your fingers around it.  His disability brought new meaning and intense struggle to that metaphor.

My father knew that heaven was just a click away, but he and my mother did not accept the mantle of being co-creators of their existence.  They saw “through a glass darkly” and it was not their time for realizing the fullness of their relationship with eternity.  But they live on in their children; they carried us to the mountain top so we could see the Promised Land which lay ahead, but they could not cross over that threshold with us.  That is to be for us alone, like the chosen ones in the Bible story, if we can fasten onto the truth and not be distracted by shiny things. 

I keep hearing, like a mantra, “now we have no choice”.  We have to step up.  We have to claim our birthright, with all its blessings and responsibilities.  We have to step into the reason we were born – we are not here at this time by accident.  We are here on purpose and we have been entrusted with the care of the planet and all its citizens. 

“Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new.”  I am quiet and pensive as I wait for the end of the world.  The worst of the rainstorm has passed, which at its peak forced me indoors to be protected . . . cocooned.  I have no fear, though I am also not given to excitement.  It is time to be quiet and mindful – noticing our steps and our words.

Because our every action; our every word creates new life – we spin new universes. 

What will we create today?

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