Too Rude For The Carol Service?

The End of the World?

On Friday before Christmas 2012 there was a media driven ripple of conjecture caused by a reading of a Mayan artefact which suggested that, as the depicted calendar came to an end, the world was to end also. It made me think about the end of the world. But I wasn't worried. Worry? Me?

At Lunchtime – A Story of Love. by Roger McGough

When the bus stopped suddenly to avoid
damaging a mother and child in the road,
the young lady in the green hat sitting opposite
was thrown across me, and not being one to
miss an opportunity i started to make love
with all my body.

At first she resisted saying that it was too early in the morning and too soon
after breakfast and that anyway she found
me repulsive. But when i explained that
this being a nuclear age, the world was going
to end at lunchtime, she took off her green hat,
put her bus ticket in her pocket
and joined in the exercise.

The bus people, and there were many of them,
were shocked and surprised and amused and annoyed, but when the
word got around that the world was coming to an end at
lunchtime, they put their pride in their pockets with their bus tickets and
made love one with the other. And even the bus conductor,
being over, climbed into the cab and struck up some sort of
relationship with the driver.

That night, on the bus coming home,
we were all a little embarrassed, especially me and the young lady
in the green hat, and we all started to say in different ways how hasty
and foolish we had been. But then, always having been a bit of a lad, i stood up and said it was a pity that the world didn't nearly end every lunchtime and
that we could always pretend. And then it happened…….

Quick as a crash we all changed partners
and soon the bus was aquiver with white
mothball bodies doing naughty things.

And the next day
And everyday
In every bus
In every street
In every town
In every country

people pretended that the world was coming
to an end at lunchtime. It still hasn’t
Although in a way it has.

from Selected Poems, 2006 at Penguin Books.

I think it is the line; “It still hasn't. Although in a way it has.” that made me think.

At Christmas, we celebrate the ending of “the world as we know it”.

With this intervention, love will make a change in the whole way of living on earth.

There will be “before” and “after”. BC and AD. Things will change.

If the world we know today was to come to and end, what would you be glad to be rid of?

Injustice – poverty – warfare – dishonesty – debt – oppression – disease... what else?

If the world we know today was to come to and end, what would you be sad to lose?

Love, joy, peace.... the song of the angels.... “Glory to God”, “Peace to His people on earth”

The angels sang of creation being renewed.

“It still hasn't. Although in a way it has.”

How would it be for our world today if, lets say just for Christmas, we removed selfishness, greed, and guilt from our celebrations? If we didn't say “I want...”. If Santa didn't ask “Have you been good?”. If it was all about people and not about “stuff”.

Because that's the change.

“Peace to HIS people..”

In that stable God is saying “Mine!”

Humanity is mine.

Your flesh and blood, soul and spirit, is mine.

Human life is not incompatible with the life of Heaven.

I am with you – and will be in you.

|Immanuel

If we grasp this truth. The world will never be the same.

The world as we know it would be transformed.

“It still hasn't. Although in a way it has.”

Happy Christmas.