fire and rain

After a very wet winter, spring seems to have come at last. Two straight days of sunshine, nearly 60 degrees (elated, I tell you!) and the world seems happy. But not the whole world.

There are a whole lotta folk out there right now, waiting for the Rapture. The End of Days. And it's supposed to happen on 21 May, or, if you haven't been looking at a calendar: the Day after Tomorrow. All this according to some guy who first thought it was going to happen in 1992, but then re-sorted the data and biblical evidence and found that with the new calculations, (and the extra 19 years to jot down a few notes and do some research): the new end is later than expected but really very soon.

Some people are making jokes about it. Others are freaking out. I'm pondering the idea, and thinking back to Y2K, and that not-so-fateful New Year's Eve count down. Remember when we thought all technology was going to crash and civilization would fall because of some 1's and 0's!? I bought a few gallons of water and extra candles. A little part of me was sad that we didn't get to camp out at home for a few days as things got situated.

And here we are. From what I've seen, there is always someone expecting the end of the world, and there always has been. It's like the study they did with high schoolers where something like 97% of those studied (I honestly have no recollection of the actual percentage, but remember it being incredibly high) admitted that they thought they'd die before high school ended (the cause being mostly that they could not conceive of a life in a world that did not involve school and living at home). Scary.

I'm going to continue to believe in mystery and all of its wonders. I don't know what the day after tomorrow will bring, but if it's anything like last Saturday, I'll be digging in my garden and enjoying the sweet scent of soil and the sound of buzzing bees.

Just for fun, here's a blog from December 2008 talking about another anticipated End of Days - January 19, 2009. (This is where I got the nuclear fire ball photo, too.)

bears - because we all need something cute to distract us from apocalyptic concerns

worried blinking baby - you know it's bad when babies are worried