Tag: collapse

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Will we faint with fear and foreboding?

I wrote this post just before my precious dad died. He was an inspiration; passionate about justice and a brilliant gardener. Here he is with his magnificent onion harvest.

Luke 21:25-28 ‘There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.’

When I read this passage this morning, I couldn’t help noticing the parallels with our current situation. Although this passage is part of the ‘mini-apocalypse’, which refers to the catastrophic fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, it resonates today in its description of a world falling apart and people’s reactions to it. In addition to the seas roaring, the sun, moon and stars, whose patterns are so reliable that they were used for calculating the calendar and for navigation, would be shaken. People’s distress over these environmental convulsions and fear for the future would lead to paralysis.

If we take the data seriously, what is coming upon the world over 2000 years later is to be feared. The description of people ‘fainting with fear’ rings true in our time and I am sure is a factor in the mental health crisis amongst the young. But Christ calls us to ‘stand up and raise [y]our heads’, standing up is contrasted with fainting, it implies action to be taken, an engagement with the situation, facing into what is to come rather than retreating from it.

Of course, there are more possible responses than the two mentioned here, and a multitude of motivating factors, but we cannot hope for the continued ‘success’ of consumer capitalism, which is built on injustice, extraction and oppression. Our ultimate hope cannot be in calm seas and predictable waves, we are far too far along for that.

So where will we find strength to stand up and face what is coming? We are to ‘raise our heads’, a symbolic looking to ‘heaven’ where God is, which we might understand as seeking union with the Divine. We are to do this because our ‘redemption is drawing near’ – I understand this as the moment of full union with God in Christ as we leave the physical body at our death. This is no pie in the sky when you die, no escapism from everyday reality, rather, with this as our ultimate destination, we draw strength to live our daily lives as Christ as calls us to, being engaged for the good of others: animal, vegetable and mineral.

Excitedly looking forward to the end of the world because this is when Christ will return (‘the son of Man coming in a cloud’) is a twisted way of reading this. Any end of the world that we might envisage is going to come at a terrible cost to the whole of creation, and is something to be grieved (blessed are those who mourn, Matthew 5:4) and alleviated as far as possible (for I was hungry and you gave me food, Matthew 25:31-46).

In any case, if we look a bit more carefully, the son of Man is coming with power and great glory, and when was Christ glorified? On the cross (John 12:20-26)! This is not power and glory as usual. I don’t know what ‘the son of Man coming in a cloud’ means but, at the very least, it sounds like Christ hasn’t forgotten us, that somehow he is still with us, and that through his suffering on the cross will be with us even in our very darkest moments.

We are facing the end of the world as we know it
And we are terrified.
This is the moment to look to God
Resisting paralysis, by standing up to act
Strengthened by our hope of union with God.
Let us follow Christ in compassion, justice and peace
The rest we leave in God’s hands.
Great is the mystery of faith.
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A statement of faith for the end of the world (as we know it)

Rescued from the slugs, but will they ripen before they rot?

The creeds of the church were written to summarize core beliefs and engaged with the great theological questions of the day. In that spirit, I have had a go at writing my own statement of faith. It is not meant to be exhaustive, but is what speaks to me at the moment. See what you think.

I believe that in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

All things came into being through the Word, refined over countless aeons, from the simplest microbes to complex mammalian life.

Life evolved to self-awareness and human creativity blossomed, but in our arrogance, we have struggled to live within our means.

God loves us too much to control us, and has let us take a path to self-destruction.

I believe that the image of the invisible God was born in human likeness, into a suffering people oppressed by empire.

Jesus the Christ revealed that God is love and that the kingdom of heaven is within us.

This threatened the powers that be, who tortured him to death on a Roman cross.

In Christ, God identified with our suffering and the suffering of all things through all time.

But death was not his end and will not be our end.

On the third day Christ rose again.

I believe that we are Christ’s body now, that the Holy Spirit dwells within us, and that we are the light of the world.

In this time of unravelling, we will live as Christ did, loving our neighbours and our enemies, and hoping beyond hope.

Christ was before all things, Christ is holding all things together, and all things will end in Christ’s embrace.

Inspired by John 1, Colossians 1, Philippians 2, Luke 17, Romans 4.
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Does your bramble have thorns?

These are the first fruits of the apple and pear trees I planted five years ago – patience is a virtue!

I recently pruned my blackberry bushes. Dealing with the relatively young thornless cultivated plants was easy – I identified the canes that gave fruit this year and cut them down. Then I moved onto the blackberries that pre-dated my time in the area, in particular, a magnificent specimen beside the parking space that is particularly well-adapted to its chosen home.

Every year it puts out thick, long canes covered with vicious hooks that attack anyone who tries to get into the passenger side of the car, but, since it also produces an abundance of blackberries, it’s the passengers who have to make accommodations. This bramble is a tight tangle of canes, old and new, embracing each other in a self-preserving heap. Locating the right canes for removal is not trivial, and this year it involved me climbing right into the heart of the bush. By the end of my work, my arms and legs were ripped to shreds (I know I should have worn better clothing, but I was in too much of a rush…)

This got me to thinking. ‘Real’ blackberries, the way nature made them, are covered in thorns – this is normal. However, we don’t like the thorns, since they cause us discomfort and make collecting berries potentially painful, so we have bred varieties without them. I wonder about a parallel with modernity…

In the last hundred years or so, technological advances and cheap fuel have meant that we (in the global north) have been able to reduce our physical discomfort and pain to levels unprecedented in history. From advances in medicine and dentistry, to the invention of washing machines and cars, life in many ways has become much easier; and when we do start to feel discomfort, we have a plethora of ways to distract ourselves or numb the pain.

This is not a normal state of affairs; in most of the rest of the world, and throughout most of history, life is much harder, and it is certainly going to become increasingly difficult for everyone in the years and decades to come. In the face of threats of social, economic and ecological collapse, our expectations of life must drastically change.

Despite being abundantly blessed in so many ways, I am not a particularly grateful person. As a product of modernity, I expect life to be ‘thornless’ like my cultivated blackberry and tend to complain when things are difficult. Perhaps it would make more sense for me to expect life to be difficult to handle, like my wild bramble, full of thorns that rip and tear, and then to be grateful when life feels good and the berries are plentiful?

Do not fear what you are about to suffer Revelation 2:10a