Amerika

So once again, the main event has come and gone, and everyone is still here.

Personally, I am glad of this. I do not relish universal extinction, although, surprisingly, there are those that do.

Harold Camping predicted this once before, apparently, and got it wrong the first time, too. Perhaps he is, even now, busily at work with some decoder, or other, computing the next “true-end-of-days” event.
Many in the media, the blogosphere, all over the place, revile the man, some claiming he should be prosecuted, locked up, exterminated, etc. This seems to fly in the face of reason. He is an unreasonable man, perhaps, but he shows how unreasonable countless others are, too.

Just another nail in the coffin of Christianity, perhaps. But also…
I smiled and offered up a prayer, today, out in the woods, to a God I have explained to, that I do not really believe in, as such.

Or something like that.

I am no atheist. But the Divine, to me, is not something I can call God, that being a word so loosely used as to have lost any and all meaning.

Strange how we tend to look upwards when we speak to this Divine being. Even when we know there is no up, no down, no inside or outside to things.

I resisted the urge to say “Amen” afterwards; simply smiled and nodded slightly.

A raven clattered overhead. The rain started again. A vole scampered by…

I know when I am smiling. I was smiling then.

So thank you, Mr. Camping, for reminding some of us, once again, in your own, spectacularly foolish way, how precious life is.

Perhaps there really will be a Judgement day. One day. And if there is, then so be it. If I am ever asked: “What have you done with your life?”, and if entry into paradise hinges upon the nature of my answer, I shall still say, with the biggest of toothless smiles:

“I lived it!”