No end of the world today

According to an old Mayan prophecy, the world was supposed to end at 5:11 AM today.  (In my time zone at least.)  Well, it's 12:00 noon and I'm still here.   Not that I really expected the world to end.  But this does give me an opportunity to answer some common questions about Judaism and "the End Times."

First of all, we need to clarify that the word olam in Hebrew can mean either "world" in the sense of the physical planet, or "eternity." The best modern translation is probably something like "space-time continuum."   (I have always wondered if this fact had any influence on Einstein's ability to imagine a point at infinity where space and time converge.  He wasn't a religious Jew, but culturally he must have heard the word olam.  Did the Hebrew language help facilitate the "thought experiment" that led to the Theory of Relativity?  Interesting question...)

In Greek, however, there are two separate words for these two ideas:  kosmos for the physical world, and aeon for a period of time or age.   So already we have a major difference between Jewish thought and Greco-Roman thought when it comes to talking about "the end times."  During the period when Christianity split off from Judaism, it was common in both groups to try and calculate the End of the World.  But were the early Christians talking about the end of the physical kosmos, or the end of an age?

Jesus and his disciples were speaking Aramaic, a derivative of Hebrew, so most likely they were using olam.  But the Gospels are written in Greek, not Hebrew, and, as far as I know, Greek does not have a single word that includes both time and space.  So the Christian authors had to choose between kosmos and aeon.  I'm no expert in this, but I do know that Judaism has tended to lean toward the "end of an age" rather than a literal destruction of the planet.

In fact, there is a famous quote in Avot de Rabbi Nathan (a classical Jewish commentary) that says, "If you are planting a tree and you hear the messiah has come, first finish planting your tree, then go to meet him."  In other words, don't drop everything just because you hear rumors about the end of the world.

By and large, modern Judaism discourages calculating a specific date for "the end times."  Why?  Because setting a specific date tends to become a form of escapism.  If you think the world is ending soon, and that a deity is going to appear and miraculously solve all your problems, then why bother to do anything to improve the world?  Many, many times I have been told by Christians that there is no point in trying to make peace in the Middle East, because there will always be "wars and rumors of wars" until Jesus returns.  Somehow, this seems defeatist and, frankly, rather callous.  In contrast, Jews are commanded to actively "seek peace and pursue it " (Psalm 34:14).

Jesus appearing in the clouds
from the Macklin Bible 1798

In Greek drama, there is a concept called deus ex machina, literally "god from a machine."  At the end of a play, an actor playing a god would be lowered on a rope (the machine) to "descend" and straighten out everything in the story.  We also see a form of this in the Book of Job, where, after Job and his friends debate the question of "why bad things happen to good people," God speaks to Job and answers the question on a cosmic scale.  (In fact, some scholars believe that the author of Job might have been a Greek convert to Judaism.  The book certainly follows the format of a Greek play.)  In Christian imagery, Jesus will descend from heaven on a cloud when he returns and sets the world right.  And in modern New Age circles, the "gods" are extraterrestrials who will descend in UFOs.

The problem with deus ex machina is that it doesn't work very well in real life.  If we sit around waiting for a messiah to fix everything for us, then nothing ever gets fixed.  This is why Jews are not "waiting for" the messiah.  Rather, we are working to bring the messianic age, to beat swords into plowshares as promised by Isaiah.  Each mitzvah we do brings us one step closer.  Some Jews do believe there will be an actual person who is the messiah, others see "bringing messiah" as a process.  But most of us would agree that it is not enough to just sit around and wait for a deus ex machina to appear and solve all our problems.   We are each responsible to help make the world a better place to live in.

(If you are still worried about a literal end of the world, check out this page on the NASA website.  NASA received so many inquiries about this "event," they actually posted a Q and A!)

Stormy skies make the best sunrises

All of the photos on this page were take from the same hill on my land in Pine County, Minnesota, looking east.  And all of them were taken on cloudy mornings.

"Minnesota Snowscape"

On a clear dawn, there isn't much of a show.  The sky gradually gets lighter, there's a strip of orange on the horizon, the sun comes up, and that's it.  One clear day looks pretty much like another.  I don't photograph many of those.

But on a cloudy morning, there is potential for some really great shots.  No two cloud formations are ever the same, and the scene lasts much longer as the sun rises behind the clouds.  When I see a cloudy dawn, I grab my camera and head for my favorite spot.

"Dragon in the Sky"

And there's always that one special moment when it all peaks.  Capturing that moment can be a challenge, because you don't really know when it is coming.  So I shoot a series of shots and then choose the best.  It doesn't always pan out, but when it does, the results are spectacular. (As for the duds, well, as my father told me many years ago, even professional photographers take bad pictures -- they just don't show them to anybody.  For every great pic on my blog, there were a whole lot of deletes.)

"Flaming Sunrise"

When I was a child living in the city, we used to sing a song about "rain, rain go away -- come again another day, little Johnny wants to play." From an urban perspective, rain was a nuisance that kept me from going outside and having fun.  But now that I'm older and we are in the middle of a major drought, I realize that my childish wish for "rain, rain go away" would be a curse.  Without rain in summer and snow storms in winter, a lot of plants and animals suffer.  Including us humans.

"Red in the Morning"

And now comes the homily.  Life, like a sunrise, varies from day to day.  We say we'd like to have perpetually clear skies, but in reality that would be rather boring.  It's the clouds in our lives that add some interest, even if they do sometimes rain on our parades.  The storms provide the challenges.  As I look back over my life, the "sunny days" are pretty much one big blur.  The ones that stand out are those that -- for good or bad -- brought some excitement into my life.  And even those dark days had important lessons for me to learn.

This is not to say I'm always excited to have disruptions in my life.  After all, some storms can be really destructive.  But, as the old saying goes, there's a silver lining in every cloud.  Or, in the case of sunrises, there's always the potential for a really great peak experience.  Maybe this is why just about every religion has the symbolism of moving from the darkness into the light.  And every storm contains a potential rainbow.

"After the Storm"

Visiting my recycling center

Today was America Recycles Day -- an event I had not heard of before, but since my local recycling center (PHASE Recycling in Sandstone, MN) was hosting an open house, I decided to go.  I had always wondered what happened to all that co-mingled material.  Was it really sorted out and re-used?  If so, how?

The tour was very instructive.  And yes, PHASE does sort through it all, starting with a line of people separating out the metals, aluminum, plastics, cardboard, paper, etc.  Then each material is compacted into bales that weigh a thousand pounds or more.  It takes a LOT of plastic bottles to make a bale.  Last year, PHASE reclaimed over TWO MILLION POUNDS of materials to be recycled.  Wow!  And this is not from a big city, either.  Although there are some good-sized towns in Pine County, we are basically rural.

PHASE stands for Pine Habilitation And Support Employment, Inc.  PHASE provides employment for developmentally-challenged individuals, as well as a very good service for our community.  And the building itself is "recycled" -- it used to be Chris's Grocery Store.  When the grocery built a newer, bigger facility nearby and became Chris's Food Center, the old building sat vacant for a while.  Meanwhile, the county was finding it hard to finance their recycling program.  PHASE took it over, acquired the old grocery, refitted it for their needs.  Today, about 30 people work there -- an excellent example of a "green" industry creating jobs!  WAY TO GO!