Ambivalent Rapture

In about an hour and forty minutes, New York is supposed to experience a catastrophe, according to some people (yep, the rapture).  Other locations in the world already hit the 6pm mark that was supposed to signal the beginning of the end of the world.  I pondered earlier if the earth would become a giant ball of wiggling jello, its innards a wave of earthquakes and storms, its wobbling body maneuvering through space in a concordance of mushy wackiness.

There was a young woman on the A train I was on this morning weeping as she screamed Christian philosophy and dogma at the passengers.  Naturally, today being the day of rapture, I wondered if she had been sent out by others, and if those others had sent out others on other trains, to other people, to make one last ditch attempt to save the souls of those who are lost.

From what I have seen, people who do not believe the end of the world is coming are either ambivalent about the idea, or find it humorous (and in that light hearted manner reject it).  Those who believe it embrace it.  So, is the choice about the idea of rapture either to embrace it, ignore it, or reject it?

As I sat listening to that young woman, I tried to look past my immediate preconceptions of how to interpret the moment.  Instead, I just tried to accept her in a different way. I wondered who she was, and what she was feeling.  She was crying.  She wanted to help us.  She wanted to save us, and, as far as the subway eye could see, no one wanted the help.  That made her sad.  At the heart of it, right or wrong, there it was, that different energy, calling my attention, grabbing my thoughts, and conducting a bit of my experience.

I come back to the question:   is the choice about the idea of rapture either to embrace it, ignore it, or reject it?  Is the argument we will have about it whether it was right, wrong, or silly to discuss?

I listened to that young woman in a way that I did not perfect, but moved in a direction that I think is appropriate.  There was a very determined and sincere energy coming from that person.  Are her conceptions any less deluded than my own?  Does rapture exist any less than my picture of the hungry ghost realm?  How about my dinner (the one I will eat at about 6pm)?  Is the kielbasa and peppers on a wheat roll, right now, as I write this, and you read it, any less real than rapture?  When I eat it, is the taste of keilbasa going to be more real than what happened at 6pm on May 21st?  All of it, is a projection in my mind (and now yours for a brief spell). 

The day of rapture is a good time to reevaluate our relationship to any idea, person, thing, or experience, no matter how real or foreign it seems to us.  That was not a woman on the train trying to convince me to save my soul before rapture.  That is not what it was.  Am I willing to look at what it IS?

I wonder what it might be like to see that rapture is not her and I at all, but all of...

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