I envy Christian fundamentalists who believe the rapture will occur at exactly 6 PM on May 21: or any specific date and hour. I envy them because, when the time comes and absolutely nothing happens, they will have a wondrous moment of disillusionment, of freedom from all hope, and it will be an opportunity for enlightenment!
The rapture is merely the intimation of personal transcendence projected onto the screen of world history. Many people think they need a cosmic event, bigger than life, to give them an excuse to drop their fears and worries. But those who have real faith know that the present moment, lived deeply enough, is the end of time. The rapture can be this very breath.
When the hour strikes and nothing happens, fundamentalists will become intensely aware of a deeper silence than they have ever known: the dissolution of creeds, Bible quotes and sermons. The whole cacophony of religion will dissolve in the realization that this is all there is: the blessed sacrament of the commonplace, just another miraculous ordinary Now on a lovely old planet rolling through the cobalt vastness of eternity.
The disciples asked Jesus when the end would come. He answered, "No one knows." St. Paul wrote, "Now is the appointed time." This is what the Bible actually teaches on the subject. There is nothing to calculate or convert into mystical numerology and prediction, which is just more mental chatter.
Faith means honoring Presence, not future. In a life of faith, the only prayer required is, I Am. I abandon the dead form of what was, and the glamorous mirage of what will be, resting my heart in the ever expanding, softly glowing ocean of what is.
Faith gently shifts attention from the form to the formless. Now is eternal, not because its shape and content have ultimate value, but because the sweet space of pure Being is rapturous, transcending any temporal form it might contain.
Yes, I envy my fundamentalist brothers and sisters this wonderful moment when nothing happens! Belief systems vanish into thin air, creeds evaporate into emptiness, we stand naked in the radiant hopelessness of Now. Such a moment is truly the end of time, the beginning of eternity.
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