There are doomsday prophesies, and people running around saying that the end is near. But I have a very hard time listening.
I'm not blind, I see what happens in the world. People are suffering, nature is destroying what we have built, corporate schemes are going down, widows are being foreclosed on. Homeless people have no decent place to sleep, some of my friends are starving because they don't have money. My car sucks. There may never be peace in the middle east. Bush nominated a lady with an ugly blouse.
The list goes on and on. An average person with average awareness about themselves and the world we live in could carry on for pages and pages. But I simply won't.
My mom made a visit this weekend. I love her, she's amazing and she gave me great skin. But she made comments about her faith's belief in "The End" or "Second Coming." Jesus is coming, etc. The off-hand comments summoned up tremors of weakness that were programmed into me at a very early age by a preacher (or bishop) promising me the fires of hell if I didn't do what the Bible and Book fo Mormon said.
I now take a moment to publicly and electronically submit my voice to the heavens and the universe, and say "I don't agree."
The world is a beautiful place full of enriching experiences and people and creatures. Every day I wake up and I have exactly what I need. I have hot water at the twist of a knob. I have electricety at the flick of a switch. I have air to breathe and I have a warm expertly crafted shelter to call my home. I have many friends with whom I am in some kind of love (
I have found that there are many many kinds of love). My family and specifically my parents, are the best people I know, and I am happy to report that they are considered some of my closest friends. I delight in the manner I was raised, though I no longer match my ideals with this system.
I have every reason right before my eyes to believe that people and the world are moving towards a new balance and harmony. Generosity is trendy: Charitable giving by Americans has risen by 180 percent in the last 45 years.
Twenty Thousand Years of Progress in the 21st Century"Centuries ago people didn't think that the world was changing at all. Their grandparents had the same lives that they did, and they expected their grandchildren would do the same, and that expectation was largely fulfilled."Today it's an axiom that life is changing and that technology is affecting the nature of society. What's not fully understood is that the pace of change is itself acelerating, and the last 20 years are not a good guide to the next 20 years. We;re doubling the paradigm shift rate, the rate of progress, every decade."The whole 20th Century was like 25 years of change at today's rate of change. In the next 25 years we'll mae four times the progress you saw in the 20th Century. And we'll make 20,000 years of progress in the 21st Century, which is almost a thousand times more technical change than we saw in the 20th Century." --Ray Kurzweil, excerpt from "The Singularity," on the
Edge website, March 25, 2001.
So, do I think the world is coming to an end? Maybe. But only in the sense that "
the world as we know it" is dying, and a new, brave, beautiful, shiny, dripping, orgasmic and sacred world is being born.
I'll be in the operating room when it pokes out its gorgeous head.
