Apocalyptic hope, in vignettes
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| Photo by Dominik Scythe on Unsplash |
Apocalyptic hope: understanding that nothing is permanent, that everything is changing, and we rise each day with the sun to make the world anew.
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This November, as the late autumn daylight seeped away and winter damp settled in, I participated in a two-day seminar through my workplace where Death met us at every turn. It curled in the wan light, floated on the chilly mist, seeped through the old bricks of our meeting room. Likewise, the curated set of readings we were wrestling with spanned countries, cultures, epochs, yet to a one included death—physical death, death to self, death through change—but death and endings all the same.
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He [Jesus] answered, "See that you not be deceived, for many will come in my name, saying, 'I am he,' and 'The time has come.' Do not follow them! When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified, for such things must happen first, but it will not immediately be the end." (Luke 21: 8-9)
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When most people hear "apocalypse," they think of destruction, end times, perhaps even those Left Behind books that were popular in the '90s. But the word itself simply means "unveiling" or "uncovering." Apocalyptic literature, strange as it may seem to our modern eyes, was actually a genre of hope—a way for marginalized communities to interpret their present circumstances and find courage to endure. —Rev. Tonetta Landis-Aina
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900 bags. 900 reusable grocery bags. 900 reusable grocery bags, each packed with a complete Thanksgiving meal. 900 reusable grocery bags, each packed with a complete Thanksgiving meal, with yet more canned goods filling the food pantry shelves. The 900 bags fill the floor of our parish hall, and the Thanksgiving food drive volunteers have created narrow aisles throughout them so people can move more easily. 900 bags. 900 meals. 900 families.
As I stared at the room, I wept at the outpouring of care but more at the overwhelming need requiring it. When will this end, Lord? I prayed to myself. And how?
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What I need to know is what to do with the strange miracle of human consciousness, how to live and grieve and hope in a world where everything we're certain of will end. —John Green
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You might think me strange to say this, but recalling and confronting the one constant in our human existence at the seminar was animating. Nothing like a swift kick to the philosophical nuts to force contemplation about how I am spending my life, and why.
At one point in the dialogue, our moderators asked us, "What is your role in creating and nurturing 'creative tension' within society?" My own words from February echoed back to me:
Look at your prodigious creativity! Look at your mandate for leadership! Look at what you might accomplish if you combine these forces and turn your heart toward love!
We have an opportunity in this chaos to refuse returning to the status quo and in that refusal increase our own aliveness.
We must imagine what we are capable of. We must then imagine what we want our shared life to achieve. Only then will we rise to the occasion.
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Lowly eyes shall be lifted,
While the tyrants taste their fear,
For that sound is both a gospel and a warning.
When we rise as a people
Who proclaim that God is near,
Who will dare to sound the trumpet in the morning?
—Rory Cooney, "The Trumpet in the Morning"
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One day after I returned home, my husband came in from the backyard, hint-of-winter air fresh around him.
"How's the garden looking?" I asked, half-joking.
"Beautiful!" he exclaimed, sincere. "The yellow leaves are everywhere, and the garlic, the onions, the scallions ... all their shoots are coming up."
Shoots! That was the last thing I was expecting him to say of a garden that had endured a lackluster-at-best year, beset by hungry deer, weakened by too much rain, later parched by inattention. In fact, the year was so disappointing that I'd been surprised when he even wanted to try winter crops for the first time. Of all years, you pick this one? Yet there are shoots, cheery dots of green in waning light, reassuring me that life takes root in the cold and dark, grows alongside us, and—despite our best efforts to kill it—feeds us still.
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To feed, hold, reflect, narrate: these are my roles in the world I inhabit.
To imagine. To generate. To build sandboxes where people can play and kitchens where people can congregate.
To ask more of myself and others.
To ask more, period.
And to listen with every quivering nerve end to the space between breaths, the rest before notes, the beat after "The End."
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It's a sad song
But we sing it anyway
'Cause here’s the thing
To know how it ends
And still begin to sing it again
As if it might turn out this time ...
—Hadestown, "Road to Hell (Reprise)"
Prayer #415: Shreds
I've written this prayer in shreds.
Outline in my purse notebook. Themes on a legal pad. Drafts in the small spiral memo book retrieved from the diaper bag.
I've written this prayer standing in the shower. Waiting in the checkout line. Listening to my children's breathing slow in the quiet dark of bedtime.
This prayer reeks of dirty laundry and fish sticks, wet leaves and bleach wipes. In my mouth it smacks of reheated broccoli. But as I idle in the minivan at a red light, having just realized that in the hubbub of departing the house I forgot all my notes, the phrase "in shreds" bubbles up like seltzer and I catch a lemony zing—the bright burst of recognition that something good will yet arrive.
Amen.
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Looking to nurture your own apocalyptic hope? Check out the chapter titled "Do I Gotta Have Faith?" in my book, Amen? Questions for a God I Hope Exists, for prayerful and poetic inspiration.