Mayan Calendar Cop-Out



Painting by Lyn Wyatt.

 I'm sitting alone in my store on Mason Avenue, listening to the clock tick. According to the Mayan calendar, we're officially out of time. Or starting a new era (one or the other).

Outside, wind thunders off the Chesapeake and down the street, blowing over signs and large potted trees. Low, wrinkled clouds fly across the sky, a whipping gray blanket. It looks like a cartoon of Doomsday. Not switching-of-the-poles violent, but veiled, cold, and whisking away.

How often have people predicted the end of the world? In my life, probably five or six times. My brothers prepared for the worst more than once, convinced that This Is It. They were certain that Y2K was going to be a mega-disaster. Collision with Niburu is discussed as a serious option. They don't discuss climate change or nuclear proliferation, chemical or biological warfare, gun control, cancer statistics, aquifer collapse or pollution--but Mayan calendars get big play.

Our culture is obsessed with The End. I guess we believe our story should have a conclusion--some point at which all the plot lines come together in a big bang that solves the problem of "what comes next, and what do we do about it?" Apocalypse is a great excuse for lack of planning, or squabbling so much that political solutions for man-made crises are forever just beyond reach.

This painting by Lyn Wyatt helps me understand The End, because there is no end. The sun rises and sets. Birds fly (thanks to environmental protection laws), fish swim (two thumbs up for the Clean Water Act). We could limit warfare, weapons, poverty and disease if we would spend our money on preserving our species, rather than killing ourselves violently, or by neglect. Nearly all of our communal pain is self inflicted. The future is in our hands--OURS--which is good news.

We don't need a flash ending. What we need is the courage to work for an always-expanding future, with no apocalyptic excuses, raptures or the expectation of being delivered from our stupidities by extraterrestrial intervention. Living, living and living some more. That's what we can expect, and what we are going to get. The only question is:

"How then shall we live?"  And the apostles asked it 2,000 years ago. It's time to come up with an answer.

Whew. That was a rant.....