Re rapture: Despite growing up in the southeast, i remained well insulated from the extremes of fundamentalist faith. I remember a few classmates in middle school and high school who might have earnestly tried to explain i'd be damned for this or that, but i don't think that affected me much at all except to simply learn to distrust fundamentalist language.
I learned about rapture from a bumpersticker: something like "Warning: Sudden stops in case of rapture." "What does that mean?" and a parent explained the joke.
In graduate school i was surprised to find someone who believed in the resurrection of the body. I still feel this sense of confusion that one could believe that one needed to be buried and not cremated in order to be available for that resurrection. I mean, really, cremation is going to make one whit of difference to a Power that could pull that off? And why would this be desirable anyhow?
Christine's father was a Baptist minister (it's the anniversary of his birthday today), and i've been asking Christine what he talked about. He was a Harvard and Chicago Seminary trained minister, and she says he spoke of the Second Coming, but not the rapture. Her exposure to fundamentalist thought was through her brother, fifteen years older, who rebelled against his father by going fundamentalist. Christine says that she was susceptible to her brother's influence for a few years, but then she started listening to rock and roll and reading philosophy. "The jig was up."
I'm marveling at how much attention is given to the prediction an Oakland preacher, and appreciate how![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
emceeaich explained the experience of growing up in a community that took the rapture seriously. Christine offers a political gloss to the attention: that this is part of the "culture wars," that this offers a chance to poke at the polarization of the nation.
The Christian eschatology of Quakers allows celebration of phrases like "The Kingdom of God is at hand" with a gospel enthusiasm that each individual can experience the inner transformation. When i think about the folks in my community i find the level of fear, anguish, and worry that drives each person to be a measure of how much i suspect they have been transformed: these are the "outward fruits." This person, distressed by the thought that the Meeting might make financial choices that could possibly end in taking out a mortgage (five, ten years from now, maybe, if a roof repair or such demanded it and we didn't have reserves): still caught up in attachment. This person, passionate about transforming our nation's relationship with torture and yet serene and grounded: they're living with freedom.
Early Friends used Light and Seed metaphors to help explain the experience. Buddhist practice seems to me to be very clear in expressing what i think of in terms of material phase change, discontinuity, the translation to doing the calculations of life to a different frame of reference. I mean, that demonstration of doing calculations in Cartesian and then in spherical coordinates: isn't that revelation? If you just frame the world THIS way, it's the same world, but look at the elegance!
I think that this morning i wish i had some way to illustrate the elegance and grace of a change of frame to those caught up in the fear and pain that the world view that brings us the rapture. How can i explain this phase change experience where humility takes on a new meaning, where suffering isn't punishment but simply is, where obedience is understood as committing oneself to reconciliation and justice? Could the message of rapture on 21 May be transmuted to my Grandmámá's New Age understanding? She constantly refers to those primate observations where suddenly a bunch of monkeys all know how to use a certain tool when she shares her hope that wars will end and we will all live peacefully together.
I'll offer a hope that sometime tomorrow there will be a phase change away from a frame of fear to one of love in some people, that they will be liberated from pain that fuels this story of earthquakes sweeping the planet.
I learned about rapture from a bumpersticker: something like "Warning: Sudden stops in case of rapture." "What does that mean?" and a parent explained the joke.
In graduate school i was surprised to find someone who believed in the resurrection of the body. I still feel this sense of confusion that one could believe that one needed to be buried and not cremated in order to be available for that resurrection. I mean, really, cremation is going to make one whit of difference to a Power that could pull that off? And why would this be desirable anyhow?
Christine's father was a Baptist minister (it's the anniversary of his birthday today), and i've been asking Christine what he talked about. He was a Harvard and Chicago Seminary trained minister, and she says he spoke of the Second Coming, but not the rapture. Her exposure to fundamentalist thought was through her brother, fifteen years older, who rebelled against his father by going fundamentalist. Christine says that she was susceptible to her brother's influence for a few years, but then she started listening to rock and roll and reading philosophy. "The jig was up."
I'm marveling at how much attention is given to the prediction an Oakland preacher, and appreciate how
emceeaich explained the experience of growing up in a community that took the rapture seriously. Christine offers a political gloss to the attention: that this is part of the "culture wars," that this offers a chance to poke at the polarization of the nation.The Christian eschatology of Quakers allows celebration of phrases like "The Kingdom of God is at hand" with a gospel enthusiasm that each individual can experience the inner transformation. When i think about the folks in my community i find the level of fear, anguish, and worry that drives each person to be a measure of how much i suspect they have been transformed: these are the "outward fruits." This person, distressed by the thought that the Meeting might make financial choices that could possibly end in taking out a mortgage (five, ten years from now, maybe, if a roof repair or such demanded it and we didn't have reserves): still caught up in attachment. This person, passionate about transforming our nation's relationship with torture and yet serene and grounded: they're living with freedom.
Early Friends used Light and Seed metaphors to help explain the experience. Buddhist practice seems to me to be very clear in expressing what i think of in terms of material phase change, discontinuity, the translation to doing the calculations of life to a different frame of reference. I mean, that demonstration of doing calculations in Cartesian and then in spherical coordinates: isn't that revelation? If you just frame the world THIS way, it's the same world, but look at the elegance!
I think that this morning i wish i had some way to illustrate the elegance and grace of a change of frame to those caught up in the fear and pain that the world view that brings us the rapture. How can i explain this phase change experience where humility takes on a new meaning, where suffering isn't punishment but simply is, where obedience is understood as committing oneself to reconciliation and justice? Could the message of rapture on 21 May be transmuted to my Grandmámá's New Age understanding? She constantly refers to those primate observations where suddenly a bunch of monkeys all know how to use a certain tool when she shares her hope that wars will end and we will all live peacefully together.
I'll offer a hope that sometime tomorrow there will be a phase change away from a frame of fear to one of love in some people, that they will be liberated from pain that fuels this story of earthquakes sweeping the planet.
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