Razors edge

Rocky, a friend of mine mentioned to me yesterday that she and her husband were going to visit Yellowstone Park soon. When she said that I immediately thought of the volcanic eruption that could (or will one day) take place there. As if reading my mind she jokingly said: “We may get there and soon after the eruption will take place”. We both laughed and kind of joked about it. Then we got a little more serious and we talked about what will happen not ‘if’ but ‘when’ it does flower into bloom. It is not a pleasant subject to discuss since it brings out of the closet all kinds of critters that I for one do not like to think about. Just think, one volcanic eruption, that is large enough, and the one in Yellow Stone seems to be that, would in the end destroy our country and if the fallout is large enough destroy our way of life world wide. The debris in the air could be so great that we would have a Nuclear winter that would last for years. Just one volcano, imagine that and all of our advanced technology and culture would end.

I was listening to the radio a few weeks ago and one of the commentators was talking about ‘sunspots’, and how our satellites, if a sunspot was large enough, would be fried and in the matter of minutes we would be thrown back to a pre-computer age. Talk about fragility. The more sophisticated we get, seems to heighten the danger and ease of its collapse. I guess it is good that we don’t think about such things all that often. Just because we live on a razors edge does not mean we have to constantly be thinking of it. Talk about high anxiety!

Statistics, at least those that are based on the number of tragedies, are never really thought to be applicable until it hits us close to home, or at home. Then it is like being in dream, when in fact it is really a wake up call. The illusion that we live in a safe world is the dream not the other way around. I suppose as we age, that illusion is taken away, at least in the area of our own mortality.

Earthquake, fire, storm, disease, accidents, all these realities we live with on a regular basis, though more often than not consciously. True we get the news, but it can seem so far away, until of course it is our turn and the world is flipped over once again. For most of us do become a static more than a few times in or lives. We are contingent beings and if one of those contingencies is taken away or changed, well it can be the end of us, or for one of those we love, or for many, in the case of a natural catastrophe. It is hard to think about our way of life ending suddenly on a cultural level. Yet it happens all the time in other countries. Mostly those improvised, where a natural event can cause the collapse of the countries infrastructure, if they even have one.

Yellow Stone Park for instance. That eruption at Yellowstone, when it happens, and it will, maybe not in our lifetime, will be so powerful that it will make Mount St. Helens explosion look like a firecracker. It seems there are no guaranties for us that we will continue to evolve as we are, but could revert to a much more primitive level of existence in what could almost be perceived as an instant. A certain number of professionals taken out would make a come back impossible.

Jesus said a hard truth in the Gospel “the rain falls on the just as well as the unjust”. This can be viewed and interrupted in more than one way. Yet I take one of it meanings to mean what I have wrote above. God does not send disasters, we live in a world where they simply happen, and anyone of us could be a victim of such an advent. Not very pleasant is it? Just think what it was like for the Ancient Romans when their empire was dying? The horror of those living in Rome when it was sacked the finale time and this once great empire died and all that implied. Truly for those experiencing this tragedy, it was a true ending of the world, with all the terror and suffering that implies.

In the book of ‘Job’, the story of a just man who lost everything, without any reason, for he lived in a world where the just were supposedly rewarded and the evil punished, yet for him his neat comfortable world ended, even though he was a just man according to the story. In then end, the book gave no answer to the dilemma. This book is one of my favorites, but it is not pleasant reading and I have always wished for a different ending. Like an answer for instance, but I doubt that will ever be forthcoming. The simplistic answer that he was being punished was shown not to be true. In fact his pious friends well meaning answers did nothing to help Job. It only made them incapable of being with him in his sufferings in a way that he felt seen and journeyed with. Perhaps that is all we can do when all is said and done, is to be with one another in time of need and journey with them until the end, whatever that may be.

Perhaps Job is a symbol of Christ. For the Christian he being the most just of men… God with us, the Son of God, sinless. One who only saw others as a ‘thou’ and not as an ‘object’ to be used for some agenda or another and was the most compassionate of healers, turning none away. Yet he was betrayed by one of his own. Abandoned by his male followers except for John, who perhaps being so young was influenced by the women who proved to be braver than the men and more loyal…. which is more often the case, than not, in the lives of most people. He was mocked and tortured and died a horrible death on the cross. This death was so horrible that for the first five centuries the Cross was not used as a symbol of Christ death, at least not in any artistic way: the brutality was still too close to home. So in Christ, the whole concept of ‘God with us’ takes on a whole different note, one that points to an intimacy that can be heart breaking if incorporated enough into ones life. For me that points to the reality that God does journey with us on our passage through life and death. We suffer one at a time, horribly at times, but Christ suffers with all, embracing us and loving us in our journey. Not the best of answers for many, in fact perhaps it is not an answer at all but stark reality, this journeying with.

I think the saying “that life is a mystery to be lived and not a problem to be solved” could be one of the wisest quotes ever penned. Every time we think we have an answer it is found to be wanting, but infinite love and its journeying with us is not an answer, but a true mystery to be lived out with those we come in contact with. The human heart is a vessel in which the love of God can grow eternally.