this is the end?

naw, not really. but if you believe harold camping, a preacher who leads an evangelical radio network, the rapture is coming this saturday, 5/21/11. the chosen will be beamed up and the rest of us will be stuck here on earth to endure misery until the end of times, which is, according to camping, in october of this year.

how does camping know the rapture is well fucking nigh? the brother's got some mad arithmetic skills and saw the numbers in the bible which, if you use the right set of figures, spells out the date and the year. npr did a very good segment today on camping's equations. which begger belief.

that is the point. make the formula as esoteric as possible and viola! you got a following. camping's gone this route before. he predicted the rapture would occur in 1994. i remember that because he had a tv show on cable where he would sit before the camera with a very thick, very worn, bible on his lap and pronounce all and sundry in a very leathery voice. i wondered if he would stay on the air when his prediction turned false. i wondered if he'd still have followers.

the answer is yes and yes. if you live in the u.s. you've probably seen the billboards that exhort us to SAVE THE DATE for the rapture. as if the rapture were true you could somehow forget that may 21st 2011 is the day. imagine your chagrin when you're not beamed up and on sunday you wonder where everyone had gone. doggone it, you missed the rapture.

there's even a man in a lark that sits in downtown with a sign for us to prepare. i saw him this morning and coworkers told me he's been sitting in the same spot with the same sign for a few weeks now.

now we have a man smarter than god, stephen hawking, telling us that heaven is a fairytale. i don't know about you but i'll take the word of a theoretical physicist who's brain seems to contain the universe over sweaty, leathery preacherman. i'm not devout. i don't believe. i think when you die you die. i'm respectful of belief and awe and humility before the mysteries. i simply can't get on board with the idea of an elect being whisked away by a just, but vengeful god.

the poet told us, death is the mother of beauty. i believe that. we are finite and thus more beautiful because of it. i just read a wonderful post by canadian poet amanda earl -- click here -- who reminds us that we shall die, blink out, simply not exist anymore, so be grateful for life and for the company of our beloveds. i believe earl.

if the end comes not in a bang but a wimper, what shall we do until then. as for me, i'm surrounding myself with my beloveds because love is stronger than hate but harder to cultivate and thus more worthy of my energy. i am going to watch films, read/write poems, blog, read blogs, listen to music and remember that life is the greatest gift i'll ever know. i shall bring all that home with me. i shall bring it home.