Cosmic Reflections

The rain won’t stop. In fact, it’s getting worse. We’ve been awake since four in the morning, listening to the sound of water pounding on the skylight and running off the roof.
      By six Milt is asking if it’s time to build an ark. I shudder while recalling the Old Testament story that has terrified and terrorized countless Sunday School children down through the ages, finally prompting one precocious youngster to remark,
                 “I don’t think much of God for drowning all those people!”
    This truly is the season that reawakens the dichotomies of good and evil, light and dark, compassion and selfishness. Ancient Scandinavian tales of Odin riding through the world at midwinter bringing reward or punishment have morphed into our Santa Claus twice checking his list of naughty and nice.
     I grew up outside of Boston imbued with Puritan/Calvinist doctrines of being pre-ordained by god for the good life: if you were prosperous, god had clearly chosen you; if you were poor, you somehow deserved it and thus god was punishing you.
     Now, in the growing morning light, I stare out at the expanding puddles of water and worry about the homeless huddled in sleeping bags beneath our Las Vegas bridges: I couldn’t help but notice the lumps of dark fabric on the sidewalks as I left the women’s shelter last evening. The less fortunate ones among us are no longer abstractions to me; they have names and faces, as well as narratives that I am honored to listen to once a month.
     It is a humbling experience. The stories I bear witness to have little to do with reward or punishment, and often display more heroism and human dignity than those shared by many of the more fortunate people I know and love. Go figure!!
                   It is clearly time to update the ancient stories!
     But my energy and enthusiasm for anything is draining away in the persistent gloom and unending rain. While the steady downpour lets up briefly by noon just as the puddles in my backyard begin to merge into one huge pool, by afternoon it starts all over again. Local news stations warn us about flash flooding and show which roads have already washed out. Red Rock Canyon in the Spring Mountains behind my house is closed because of the water gushing through rocks and down arroyos. Detention basins the size of several football fields are filling up.
Is this a taste of the coming deluge due to polar ice melt? It is not just Bangladesh and New Orleans that are at risk!
      Any new story must somehow deal with the image of our planet from lunar orbit: on this actual ark sailing through the ocean of deep space we are all on the ride together! This was the REAL message beamed back to us from lunar orbit that Christmas Eve in 1968: we are all of us saved and chosen just by virtue of having become the consciousness of the emergent Universe reflecting upon itself!
     Surely that’s not about to be stifled because of our stupidity and stubbornness. Most people who have stopped long enough to consider the consequences of global warming have concluded that the Earth will simply shuck us off like a bad investment of time and energy and start all over again.
I can’t accept that. I am not willing to give up on us yet. For after all, this, the darkest time of our year, is the season of hope. Miracles happen! Suddenly the doorbell rings. I open to the dark cold rain of late afternoon and find three packages on my porch…. gifts from my daughters and granddaughters.