ADVENT AGAIN. A new year a month ahead of calendar New Years, this year when the passage from Luke 21 in the lectionary for today seems to be ominously close.
There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars,
and on earth nations will be in dismay,
perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves.
People will die of fright
in anticipation of what is coming upon the world,
for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
This hard text to start the new year seems to me to be especially appropriate and the warning isn't that we're going to get back to the normal we once knew or assumed we knew. Anyone who promises that is not going to be able to deliver it.
The Omicron variant is being reported as an all too real indication that the worst case scenario for this novel virus to kill far more people, outracing science might happen.
And then there's climate change which also might just end up killing us all. The most literally real of descriptions in the text.
And the rise of neo-fascism and neo-Nazism, gangster governments far worse than those in the quasi democracies of recent time. I think that divorced from any overriding morality, one of the great successes of modernism and scientism, they might make even the recent dictatorships look like a mere trial run.
That and the mass media that has lied us into at least two and possibly three of the above.
The novel corona virus, either a knowing or accidental product of that, as well. I still think it's most likely that it was a product of the cruel practices of the meat industry, though it wouldn't surprise me if it was some scientists tinkering with bat viruses nearby. The practiced secrecy of the Chinese Communist government isn't helping to clear that up, giving fodder for American and Brit racists looking for someone to take the blame for the Republican-fascists and Conservatives who made things much worse than they had to be. There is an irony in that the would be modern, scientific Communists being worse than the most corrupt periods in the Vatican Curia for covering up the truth. Either way it was our fault as a species in the modern period that has brought us here. 's not God's fault.
Real life is enough to scare you to death. Young people in total despair over climate change and the rest have my total sympathy, especially if they aren't doing their most to be part of the problem.
Harder work is the text that follows in Luke
And then they will see the Son of Man
coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
But when these signs begin to happen,
stand erect and raise your heads
because your redemption is at hand.
Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy
from carousing and drunkenness
and the anxieties of daily life,
and that day catch you by surprise like a trap.
For that day will assault everyone
who lives on the face of the earth.
Be vigilant at all times
and pray that you have the strength
to escape the tribulations that are imminent
and to stand before the Son of Man.
Notice even those who are NOT drinking and carousing are going to get it, so this isn't a prepper hoarding advisory as I'd guess a lot of people might read it. Especially the white evangelicals and trad-Catholics.
Carousing in our context being what the more regressive members of the US Catholic Conference of Bishops promote as "freedom of religion." What the Murdoch cess pool media and a million commercials advocate as "Christmas," which, being American Christmas has nothing to do with the Jesus of the Gospels and Epistles. And the infamous white evangelicals do the same as much as idolized idiot football players and celebrity anti-vaxxers and the kinds of obnoxious anti-social blights that get Youtubed as "Karens" not to mention MDs from the Hoover Institute and associated gangster funded think tanks and members of the media. And libertarians of all kinds. Not wearing a mask is carousing, driving your car when you don't have to, turning the heat up when you could put on a jacket instead. Compared to them the gals and guys who get a little drunk and rowdy are hardly the most to blame. Especially those who don't take up the "rights" of the expanded 2nd Amendment idiocy of the judiciary and Republican-fascist legislatures. Though even short of shooting a lot of people, getting drunk doesn't help, either.
This is a warning that the worst is on its way and the preparation for it isn't to preserve American middle-class life, it's for something not of that world. It isn't what a semi-automatic or shrewd financial counseling is going to protect your hoard from. Doing those just makes you part of the whirlwind.
I'll admit it, I'm scared. I'm scared for us all and, of course, most of all those I love and like and all the sentient creatures who can suffer innocently like animals kept for slaughter. With the future as it looks now, try to prepare for a kingdom not of this world because this one isn't looking too promising. That's what I take from this passage and the signs of the time.
I don't know what to make of the Son of Man coming on a cloud as a literal thing, I think it means that there will be those who try to make God's will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. Doing that publicly. Maybe it's time to find a new volunteer opportunity that will help do that. I can't think of anything better to be doing. And getting the booster I've ween waiting for, the sixth month past my second shot. I'll schedule it today.
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