Morford takes on Revelations.
---
Which Way To The Apocalypse?
When all the fanatical Christians disappear, will traffic finally
improve?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, June 9, 2006
Wait, did I miss it?
Did it happen three days ago, on 6-6-06, a.k.a. Tea Time with the Beast,
a.k.a. the Great Day of Reckoning, a.k.a. the National Day of Slayer,
all the world crashing down in a heap of hissing steam and belching
smoke and balmy gusty breezes sometime around noon just after lunch but
not before rush hour and hitting right around siesta?
I might have been napping. Did the Apocalypse finally hit? Did the deep
wish of roughly a half-billion zealous believers come to pass and were
they suddenly whisked off into the humming glorious divine ether in one
big orgiastic load of divine redemption, leaving us heathens and pagans
and Wiccans and Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and journalists to fight
it out over the last scraps of artisan Gruyère and fine Pinot Noir and
gorgeous new Porsche Caymans? I simply cannot be sure.
Because if so, I am sitting here feeling a little gypped. I am sitting
here not at all on fire, not at all reeling in unrelenting pain, not at
all staring into the hot face of vile eternal doom without a single
oscillating fan to cool my aching bones. Yet another portentous day has
passed and the Rapture Index is almost off the charts with seething
Armageddon certainty, and yet I'm still getting perfectly good cell
reception. What gives?
After all, the time is now. The pump of doom is perfectly primed. The
elements are all in place: massive BushCo abuse and vicious war and
increasingly violent storms and armies of the ignorant and the righteous
broadcasting their hate and their abominable fashion sense across the
land. Do you not feel it? Man, we are so ready.
And yet still we wait.
I do not exactly know how the Christian right envisions Armageddon
(though their new "Left Behind" video game is a happily blood-drenched
indicator), but here is how I've always pictured it:
Hordes of the ultra-pious, decked out in "I (Heart) Jimmy Swaggart's
Flop Sweat" T-shirts and black socks with sandals, rise to the heavens
in giant peach-colored Ford Aerostars to gather in enormous hugging
throngs where they are met by a wary and bleary-eyed St. Peter who
offers them processed cold cuts and Kraft Singles and lukewarm Diet Dr.
Pepper.
There are rusty swing sets with exposed bolts. There are inflatable
pools. There is watery decaf coffee. There are large fleets of beige
1997 Honda Civics with cassette players locked down and preloaded with
only Mariah Carey and Yanni. Everyone is slowly but surely driven
giddily insane by the incessant harp music and the unmistakable scent of
angel droppings. All thought ceases.
Yes, Jesus is there, smiling and rocking back and forth and looking just
weirdly happy, and the minions gather 'round him in swooning, narcotized
glee, everyone feeling more than a little justified for all their nasty
deeds while on Earth, all the abortion clinic firebombings and all the
protests of "The Da Vinci Code" and that morally nauseating thing with
Terri Schiavo back in '05.
Finally, finally they have arrived at a place where no one is having sex
and no one wants to marry someone from their same gender and all
experience has been filed down to a dull nub of vague, tasteless
sensation as liquid Prozac is misted into the air via a giant Glade
Plug-In the size of Florida.
Except something is a little off. Something is not quite right. Let us
look closer. Why, that's not Jesus at all -- it's actually a big blow-up
doll of Jesus, a giant swaying latex toy, a wacky waving inflatable
arm-flailing tube man painted to look like Jesus, bobbing back and forth
like a car salesman on meth. Hmm.
But the minions, of course, do not notice. They are all swaying and
waving in equally ecstatic response. It is one hell of a spectacle. It
is vaguely cultish. It is also, eerily, exactly like a Celine Dion
concert. Hmm.
And where's the real Jesus? Why, the true Christ is back on Earth, once
and for all and finally, teaching everyone an incredible new dance,
preparing the open minded and the nondogmatic for cosmic leapfrog. Turns
out that only when the fanatics and the zealots and the demagogues were
finally airlifted to the great padded Romper Room in the sky that the
real Great Work could finally continue. Isn't that ironic? Isn't that
fabulous? Isn't that exactly what you suspected all along?
What a fanciful dream. Indeed, you may think this talk of the Second
Coming is just silly. You may think talk of Armageddon is just best left
to plasticky televangelists and anti-everything fanatics like James
Dobson and people who organize their gun collections by
phallicentricity. And you would be very much mostly correct.
But be reminded: As reported here previously, the "Left Behind" series
of Apocalypse-porn books has sold upward of 65 million copies worldwide.
Many, many in high positions of power in the U.S. government (Hi,
Senator Santorum!) see the accelerated deterioration of the Earth as a
very good thing indeed, as there is no deed more worthy, no abuse more
justified than that which helps hasten the Second Coming. SUVs? War? Oil
gluttony? Ozone depletion? Condi Rice? All good, baby. All quickening
the imminent Apocalypse.
Of course, there is a divine kicker. There is an entirely different
scenario, similar but also completely different. Since ancient,
pre-Christian times, the mystics and wise ones have their version of
Armageddon, too, though theirs involves far less screaming and much less
hellfire and far fewer interminable reruns of "7th Heaven" on local
cable.
It does not, furthermore, involve leaving billions behind to fester and
kill and drink pig's blood and remain wallowing in hell. It is merely a
time when those whose hearts are luminous and whose perspectives are
clear and whose minds are open and whose spirits are unpummeled by dogma
and monotheistic self-righteousness, well, they will merely slip over to
another plane. As for the rest, they will merely be resigned to
experiencing this life all over again, and again, and again, until they
get it right. It's just like the Christian Rapture, except flipped over
and inverted and made transcendent and well lubricated and naked.
It is a time, maybe even just six years from now (2012, according to a
very prescient Mayan calendar), when a Great Awakening will occur. It is
when those who are ready, spiritually and energetically speaking, to
evolve, to take the Next Step, will take a great trampoline backflip
into deeper awareness.
You want a sign? You want something to signal you when it's about to
happen? Easy enough. You can't miss it: Just look for the sudden,
global, collective s---eating grin.
---
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2006/06/09/notes060
906.DTL&nl=fix
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
Contact - Throw a .net over the .com
.
|
