June 17 2023
SOCIETAL SUICIDE?
The date, June 17, brings back many memories. On that day, 70 years ago, in Hamilton, Ontario, my fiancée, Diny Hilbers, and I were married. My wife died on October 23 2020. On our gravestone is inscribed, under our birth names, “Till we meet again”. I wholeheartedly believe in, what the Apostles’ Creed says, “the resurrection of the dead, and life everlasting.”
I sense there is a growing obsession with death in today’s society, a desire to let go of responsibility -witness climate change -, a desire to shed the burden of individuality, choice, freedom, a desire to just give up and sink back into the ‘dust we are’.
In the January/February issue of The Atlantic, under the theme of Notes from the Apocalypse,was an article by Adam Kirsch: The People cheering for Humanity’s End. The author wonders, “Is the reign of human beings on Earth nearing its end?” He states that there is a disparate group of thinkers who say ‘yes’ to that notion, and would welcome such finality.
I agree: a cold and basic analysis of the human state would, indeed, come to such a conclusion.
Look at the young people today. They are grappling with challenges that no generation ever, has been forced to deal with. They just have come out of the Covid experience, and now face disastrous Climate Change, which has become a visible threat, evident in universal forest fires, forcing us again to wearing face masks.
Indeed, there are immense changes taking place everywhere, even in places where few people make a living: the frigid North. There, for many millennia, the color of the landscape was pure, eye-blinding white, where ‘white’ bears were among the world’s largest creatures. That significant part of God’s creation, is now totally out of balance.
El Niño.
The next El Niño is on the way. They are forming when the water at the surface of the central and eastern Pacific around the Equator is warmer than usual. This occasional pattern influences weather dynamics worldwide and indicates warmer years globally. This year humans have pumped three additional years’ worth of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere since the last El Niño. That means the current one emerges amid planetary conditions that will accelerate its warming effects.
There you have it
There you have it: the oceans are already running record warmest, without the El Niño properly developed yet. Once it has fully come into force, it could well destroy habitat for all living creatures. Be prepared!
Morphic Resonance.
There is something like Morphic Resonance, remembrance of matters past. The entire world remembers when trees, animals, seas, earth, sky, formed a unity with us humans: the suffering of one involves the suffering of all: killing one, kills all. These vibrations still penetrate our minds and spirits and, yes, our bodies too: “All one body, we”, says the Bible.
This phenomenon is especially evident in the polar regions, where warming is three times faster than the global average, where the loss of ice is producing a vicious spiral of heating world-wide: ‘morphic resonance’ at work, that penetrates every core of all universal beings. It seems that the smarter we become technically, the dumber we become mentally and spiritually.
The Natural smarts we lack.
Those four kids in Colombia survived because they know more about ‘how to live’, than we do, wealthy Westerners. They know what is important in life; they know the essentials of existence. Thirteen-year-old Lesly Mukutuy was able to identify edible fruits, find suitable water and avoid dangerous plants and animals, thanks in part to knowledge handed down by her environmental schooling: the ancestral knowledge of the eldest child kept her younger siblings, including a ‘one year old’ baby, alive after 40 days. Of such is the Kingdom: Imagine: forty days in the wilderness, just like Jesus!
For once I partially agree with former President Donald J. Trump, when he cast his indictments as a “final battle” with “corrupt” forces that are destroying the country, except that he is the instigator of this evil. It certainly relates to Revelation 12: 7: “Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back”. Whatever happens in heaven, resonates on earth.
Let me conclude with an apocalyptic passage from the Mayan period, around
250 AD. It succumbed soon after.
Eat, eat, while there is bread
Drink, drink, while there is water;
A day comes when dust shall darken the air,
When a blight shall wither the land,
When a cloud shall arise,
When a mountain shall be lifted up,
When a strong man shall seize the city,
When ruin shall fall upon all things,
When the tender leaf shall be destroyed.