Apocalypse and Childish Things

To faithful longtime readers of Cinema Nocturne, I beg a little indulgence. I've been posting "Greatest Hits" from the old Workpadsite. I'm trying to drum up new business through Zimbio and other blog exposure sites, so I've been porting overfavorite posts from the old blog which I think might ring bells for a wider audience. I'm still thoroughly committed to thoughtful new content, though, and promise that CN will not become some kind of blogulous TV Land.

Anyway, here's a post from a couple of years ago. I've freshened it up in little ways, and edited in a more satisfying conclusion.

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I subscribe to a few email discussion lists which most people would characterize as "New Age". In general, the people on these lists are intelligent and kind. But a number of the most vocal folks believe that some cosmic reckoning is going to take place on December 21, 2012. They have different ways of expressing it, but the most common story among them is that an army of angels, ascended Masters and benevolent aliens are going to descend on Earth on the fateful day and haul our sorry asses into the fifth dimension, where everyone is enlightened and noone is thinking of kicking a retired couple out of their home because they can't pay the mortgage.

I wish I could join them. But in the reality I inhabit, God, while eternally present, doesn't seem to operate with cosmic bailouts of this kind. Itt's been two thousand years since Christ went to the cross, and for all I know, it will be another two thousand before he comes back. Except in the way that he is present when we toiling mortals show some character and love one another even when it is the most difficult, when the incoming checks don't seem to match outgoing expenses and the people who run the country are evil or deranged. I don't doubt that somewhere in the richness of third dimensional reality there are at least helpful entities of all kinds: whether they be spirits, faeries, Ascended Masters, angels and what have you. But they're not waiting for some Grand Opening, some orchestra hit and calendrical spotlight to be focused. They come to us in our dreams, our walks in the park, our quiet reflective moments. In a sense, I suppose they've always been with us. But almost always, and even, Id bet my head, on December 21, 2012, it's we who will have to do the heavy lifting.

To some, I fear, this will seem a painful, even a spiteful thing for me to say. But in the exact center of my mortal years, I have very few truly mean bones in my body. It’s not my intention to burst balloons or pickle dearly held dreams in brine. All of these angelic aliens, the Ashtar Command and the wise benevolent Pleiadians I think of as beautiful, poetic. Why not frame redemption in the language of contemporary speculative fiction. It’s a damned site more enlivening than stories of women being stoned to death or the decapitation of saints.

The truth about me is that in certain moments I’d like to have faith in some Galactic Alliance, some archangelic paratroopers to blow the lid off this five and dime reality and give us a roaring good show of an apocalypse. But I’m a little like Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, the leper messiah who couldn’t believe in mystic healing and had to suffer depravity and death before the blasphemousLord Foul could be toppled from his dark throne. I have diabetes and HIV, and taking a daily regime of finely honed poisons tends to rob you of that kind of fantasy entirely --if it doesn’t do exactly the opposite.

Besides this basic intransigence, I think there’s something elegant in the human spirit surviving the End of the World, as it does every Winter Solstice, every Harmonic Convergence (remember that one?), every Millenium and every passing comet. I say: trust in the real power –your own-- not these endless anniversaries of terror and hokum. Don’t go into the Light, Carol Anne. Put away your childish things.