The End of the World. And Beyond

I know there are many elated with the election results.  But most in my circles are despairing.  Or fearful.  Or both.

There’s an End of the World feeling.   We – naively – thought the world was slowly becoming a better place.   And suddenly we wake up to the fact that roughly half of our population defines “better” in a stunningly different way:  more angry, defensive. More reactionary.  More hostile and racist.  More anti-minority of every sort.

In my mind I try to grasp… how can this be better?   How can this be “great”?

In the middle of the night on election night, I had seen the direction things were going as I went to bed.  I was trying to sleep anyway, pray and think positive.   No success.

In my semi-awake state, the thought shot through me… “I’ll hear fireworks.  And it will mean Trump has won.”    NO!  I screamed inwardly and rolled over once again.   Sure enough, about 90 wakeful minutes later, I heard the loud boom of fireworks in our suburban neighborhood.  With fear in the pit of my stomach I climbed out of my dark bed (still no sleep) to check my iPhone for the results. Yes, he had passed 270 electoral votes.

Back in bed I sorted through my options… we could move to Canada.  We could move to the country – somehow, somewhere.  I began to sort through friends who might let us move there and build on a piece of their land.   I considered whether I might prefer to die, than to watch the next few months and years unfold.  Maybe the arc of history bends ever toward justice but I’m not sure I’m strong enough to wait for it.

The end of the world. My mind was racing with end of the world thoughts and terrors.

But a couple of nights later, with the end-of-the-world cycle still spinning, I remembered I had been here before.   I had experienced events as a personal – or even global – end of the world.    Still, here I was, alive, and up until now, pretty happy.

To be honest, there were several over the course of my lifetime.  Someone close to me had died, and other losses and barriers.

Here is one of my most painful end-of-the-world stories.  After being single almost 10 years, I had married a man I had known only a couple of months.  My children thought he was great, and my friends were happy for me.  He was brilliant, talented, funny, colorful and really loved me.

Two days before the wedding he unexpectedly raged at me and threatened to call it off.  I was a wreck, consulted with a friend, decided to apologize and beg forgiveness.  We married.   That cycle became a pattern.  Within 6 months, under pressure from him, I had sold my home of 18 years and was living in temporary housing with him. I had closed my business and had no income because my customers were farmers, primarily men, and he considered that inappropriate.   By the end of 12 months I was living with emotional violence constantly and was afraid of physical violence.

We were living in a used RV on my business property, on a road travelled by my community daily.  My circumstances were very public for my neighbors to witness.  After weeks of prayer, tears, and a very public exposure – – I left.

I was homeless.  Jobless.  Emotionally devastated and physically sick.  Completely defeated without a clue to my future.

Humiliation was my word.  I was humiliated.  Privately.  Publicly. I took refuge in my mother’s home while she was away for the winter, left lights on 24 hours a day, and cried.

For me, it was an end-of-the-world experience.

I won’t detail the path from there to here, but I will tell you that 15 years later, I owe my joy, my spirituality, my community, my life and my wonderful (current) husband to that end-of-the-world experience.

Without that profound loss I would not have left that rural area.  I would not have met my husband Stan a few years later.  I would not be singing harmony with Stan and my dear friend Judy.  I would not know or be part of Unity and my community here in Kansas City.  Most of what I cherish now is a result of that loss and my moving out and up from there.

On my refrigerator is a faded scrap of paper that I posted in1994.  From A Course in Miracles, it reads:  The end of the world is not its destruction, but its translation into heaven.  

As I lay in bed fearing the end of the world the first nights after the election, I remembered all my own personal end-of-the-world stories, and how they played out over time.  Then that quote came back to me as well.

The end of the world is not its destruction, but its translation into heaven. 

As the winner’s victory sunk in, I imagined the next few days, weeks, months, years, and was terrified.  I read news accounts of hate crimes and hate slogans boldly splashed on walls and streets in these few days since the election results.   End-of-the-world.

But then, as my tears continued to fall, I saw other things.  I saw many friends hugging each other through tears in public places.   I saw a woman speak of her mixed race 12 year old grandson waking up terrified of what will happen to him – through her own tears.  I heard another woman speak of her child with cerebral palsy and that in her mind the video of the pres-elect’s ridicule of a handicapped person keeps playing like a bad movie.  More tears.  I heard women encouraging each of us to be where we are emotionally – to feel the despair and the fear and the anger.  I witnessed people wearing safety pins everywhere, before I even understood what they represented.  I heard of one young woman university student wearing a hijab who was verbally accosted and went back to her room fearful.  At that same university, following this incident, an administrative request for volunteers to walk students who felt afraid to class and work was answered by a hundred volunteers.

I read stories of a young man, Derek Black, heir to the white supremacy/white nationalist groups, who publicly left his father’s group and teachings, in favor of diversity and connection.

And so much more.

I woke this morning with joy in my heart.  Not joy that I was pushing myself into, or doing as a conscious spiritual practice.  This joy is the loop based on what I’m seeing in the world and feeling in myself.

I’m going out on a limb here.  If you are, like me, on a conscious spiritual path, and you have been working for, praying for, the world to wake up, to become more loving… if you are on the progressive spiritual side of the spectrum – I offer that (though I could not see this a few days ago), the progressives had to lose to answer this prayer.

The progressives had to lose for the prayer for an awakening world to be answered.

Why?

Because many of the progressives – like me and my friends – are committed to spiritual practices of consciousness, much needed-shadow work, forgiveness, meditation.  In the face of a tremendous loss, we will turn to these tools and hopefully merge them with activism.  For the most part, those of us who “lost” will not take guns or bombs and blow someone or something away.

For humanity to progress, the progressives had to lose, to recommit to the practices that will raise consciousness on the planet.  To do the work that Love must do to make the changes needed.

Perhaps even to give the hard-right the reins and see what they do with them.

My eyes must be changed to see this, but it’s really there.

The end of the world is not its destruction, but its translation into heaven.