the finer line

We’re always hearing that the end is near. We wait like penguins and nothing happens.  When I was about eighteen it was predicted that Jesus was to appear at a certain time on a certain dead channel on all television sets.  Me and my friends ran to the electronics section of a department store and stood in front of white static, waiting and laughing at the absurdity of it.  If someone had asked us what we believed, we’d have said blindly, that we were atheists.  At any rate, Jesus never appeared on T.V. that night.

I always assumed too much when it came to faith.  Loose facts about the blood and triumph of Christianity.  Vague glimpses of history to recite and base a belief system on.  So much points to a lack of fortitude, principle unwound and scattered on my bottom shelf, upper-middle-class childhood bedroom floor.  A generalized thought formation spun out of an American suburb – the antennas calling us home for dinner.  As a kid, I threw belief at anything that made me feel outside the bubble of my small city.

Growing up out of that environment, I started to wish that the world would end and that everything would get washed clean, including perspective.  I recently saw a quote by the writer Haruki Murakami.  He said, “Everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come.”  This may be true today. Is that the way it’s always been?

I have trouble with atheism for the same reason I have trouble not believing in ghosts or aliens.

I’m tired of hearing that the end is near. The vision toward the end is sightless. The end is never there. There is never anywhere.