A Momentary Lapse in Judgment

As I read the sign in front of the church, I felt myself being sucked back into the black hole of pessimism that has been welling-up in me for the past decade or so.  For a while, I thought it was acid reflux, and indeed, Nexium actually helped.  

 For a while. Living better through chemistry.

The roadside sign implored, “Cherish each other and creation.”  Apparently, you don’t have to sit in a pew to get a sermon.  I once went to a church that assembled at a drive-in- movie theatre.  Passion plays on Sunday morning, passion pit on Saturday night.

The subtext implies that these are things we should be doing but we are not.  Perhaps this is the true epitaph that should be carved on the gravestones of the latter-day world: “We could have done better…”

But we didn’t.

We are drowning in the murk and detritus of our lesser angels, and are surely vulnerable, as are all life forms, to the strictly enforce rules of the evolutionary road.  This comes as no surprise for many; slings and arrows…slings and arrows.  For a few of us it is a bit of a shock, being buffered by home grown avarice. It was a nice ride while it lasted, the sign might read post-apocalypse, in front of The Church of I Told You So. 

I’m not ready for this eventuality.  I was born and ill-bred with the great American, great western dream, spawned post war; such a foolish dream. John and Paul wrote prophetically, although not likely their intention:

“…I've got to admit it's getting better (Better)
A little better all the time (It can't get no worse…)

Pop, opt!

Hopeful as these platitudes seem, it can always get worse.  At least in the short run.  And help me if you will to define short run:  What hour, what day?  What era, what epoch? What longitudinal lifeline?

We are on the cusp of many dark days of pessimism, followed by boundless stretches of night.  The pendulum will swing long and wide.

And as for me, I wish not to be prophetic.  I wish not to sooth say the end times, (which I saw on the roadside sign of another Pentecostal church:

“Are we in end times?”)

Give me that ol’ roadside religion!

I’d like to disbelieve these ideas.  I’d like to be buoyed by optimism.  But facts tell true another story.

It seems, I don’t burn hot enough. My shields are down, I don’t possess the greater glory of egotism that might just keep the climatologists and sociologist from knocking at my door.  “Ding-dong, doomsday calling! 

And I must admit, when all hope is gone, that it’s not an altogether bad thing.  It’s just a thing.  The next thing. 

It was a good run wasn’t it?

“…It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine…” Michael Stipe, et al.

It leaves me vulnerable (haven’t we always been?) to those slings and arrows, large and small, while still resting in the residue of whimsy and wonder?

“I reject your reality and substitute my own.”  -The Dungeonmaster.

I do what I can, while we are being consumed, absorbed, amoeba like, into the next moment, both terrifying and glorious.

Meanwhile,

Moment by moment…

-Paul Sanderson

May, 2019