Rugged Communalists Unite!

So, if they say to you, “Look! He is in the wilderness”, do not go out. If they say, “Look! He is in the inner rooms”, do not believe it. -- Matthew 24:26


Call it a preview of Sunday's sermon, I'm focusing a lot these days on the tension between individual and communal impulses in our world and, especially, our religions.

It all started with NPR, of course. The world would be a much better place if we all spent half an hour or so every day digging through their various reports and wild hairs. Here's what got me started:

NPR: Is the end nigh? We'll know soon enough.

This is Harold Camping, an 89 year-old preacher who – since the world didn’t end on September 6, 1994, as he originally predicted – has come to the irrefutable conclusion that a series of devastating earthquakes will spell rapture and the end of the world on May 21 at 6 p.m… That’s right, one week from Saturday, as I write this. Be sure and make it an early dinner that night.

Harold has ambled along in this belief for some time, broadcasting it on his Family Radio program. It has led a handful of folks to quit their jobs, cash in their 401(k)s, get divorced from sceptical spouses (ya think?!?), and take to the streets to hand out tracts and preach the rapture to all who would hear.

You and I know there have been plenty of doomsday-ers through the millennia. Fervent crackpots, we consider them. Some are harmless, others much worse. But each of them must be at least somewhat aware of the poor track record of End-of-the-World types (even Jesus is quoted as saying HE hadn’t a clue when it would happen – and that’s the Gospel truth).

But here’s the thing: At some point in the next million years or so, one of these guys and gals is going to trip into perfect timing: the asteroid will hit, the sun will go szzztz, the earth will crack like an egg, or some other random or human-instigated calamity will send us off our orbit, and, just before our vital organs and/or bionic/android parts are vaporized in the cold, dark vacuum of space, that individual may have just enough time to cap human history with the mother of all I-told-you-so’s. Apparently this dark cosmic lottery is an attractive possibility for would-be prophets of destruction. They’re willing to go waaaay out on that limb by themselves and then call a few gullible fools out there with them, each of whom also burns with a need to be right in some spectacular way nobody else can match. This story brought alternating chuckles and groans. I just pray Mr. Camping isn’t next to me saying “I told you so” a week from Saturday just before I go szzztz in the yawning vacuum of space.

So then I check the NPR sidebar and find this story:

the loneliest plant in the world

The story is all about a plant found in Africa in 1895, a male cutting of which was carried to London, where it sat inside for 98 years, only to wake up and find it had been out of circulation for so long, there were no female plants left to date. They believe this one male plant, which dutifully produces pollen and frequents singles’ garden happy hours, is all that is left of E. Woodii. It can be cloned, but only to produce more males, and no female counterpart has been found (and, yes, the article does mention the Ents’ dilemma from Lord of the Rings, so let’s not breathe another Tolkienian word about it… as I am trying to maintain the illusion that I am only a partial dork.)

You can’t help but feel sorry for this guy. He’s out there all alone, with little to no hope of ever settling down with a little Mrs. E. Woodii.  Truly, nobody wants to be that isolated, that special.

I believe it was God – talking to only-God-knows-Who – who said “it is not good that man should be alone.” And who would know better, as we were dreamed up by the Holy One as a solution to Her own solitary non-confinement? We are meant to come together, not break apart.

We are built of the stuff just laying around, fed starlight in one form or another, taught to embrace and apply all the best thoughts thought up so far, and basically tool about the planet that claims us as one of its many little 80-year migratory pimples. The thought of any of us being an individual is rather jaw-dropping, when framed in such a manner.

So, from now on I am going to strive to be a Rugged Communalist. I want to recognize more clearly that I am the product of so much borrowed heat and light. I don’t want to distance myself from the competition, a la Harold Camping. Heck, I don’t want to experience competition in such things. I’d rather just throw it all in the God box, hang on to my wife/kids/friends/job/community/world/semi-sanity, strive to DO right over BE right, and pray never to become the faith equivalent of E. Woodii.