It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine…

When this particular scenario comes to you in the form of a question, what’s the first answer that pops into your head? Well, what’s the question? you wonder. If the world were to end at this time tomorrow, what would you do today? That’s different from just asking, “What would you do if you knew the world was about to end?” Isn’t it?

Everyone in the discussion group agreed that they would probably go home and hang out with their loved ones until the world ended, but I wondered what that meant, exactly. Would there be a bright flash before Earth disintegrated? Would the ground shake itself to pieces and swallow every human on the planet in the process?

Would there be pandemonium and hysteria en masse or would everyone take this calmly and wait for time to tick to zero?

The future is uncertain, a mirror that doesn’t reflect anything but what we wish would happen, and even those desires are as wispy as the clouds we see on a sunny day. The future, on the other hand, is as thick and dark as the clouds that form when thunderstorms or even hurricanes appear on the horizon. It takes without asking, wreaks havoc with present predictions, and ultimately consumes today and becomes the present.

Were we to know what the future would bring, would we want to continue living?

I’m happy enough with those fleeting glimpses that our answers to curious questions like “What would you do if the world ended” gives us. I may not know the future, may not like what I hear will happen in the future from others, but then again, I prefer to remain in the present. I know the present well.

…for the Presidential election. Here’s the current line-up.

Thank you for starting this, Bryan.

(Via Rev. Mike)

His name was Nate. He towered head and shoulders above her, a little heavyset, loud, a mop of dirty brown hair, soft large eyes, a blunt nose, always smiling, always joking. He worked at a pet hospital and came to the seminar wearing the top half of his uniform, about an hour late.

He annoyed her because he usually talked to the people sitting behind him at the same time the training session leader was going through the lesson, distracting her and making it difficult to concentrate on the information given. What was worse, his answers to the session leader’s questions had nothing to do with the lesson.

That changed during the break.

“Hey,” he said, stopping her outside the conference room, “I’m sorry if I was being obnoxious or anything.”

She just looked at him and, despite herself, began to soften. “It’s okay. No harm done.” Just don’t do it again, will you? she added silently.

He smiled and held out a hand. “I’m Nate, by the way.”

“I know.” They shook hands and talked a little more, about life outside the session, where they were from and what they did for a living.

And then she noticed a funny thing about him. He complimented her on the sweater she was wearing, told her that she was attractive, but backed off and apologized immediately after the words left his mouth. When she smiled back, he talked about the irony of meeting women who were interested in him when he was already attached to someone and how no female approached him when he was single.

Mixed signals. Was he interested? Did she care?

“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.

“Um, no…”

“Really? You looked like the type who would have one.”

Well.

He asked her for a hug before they parted ways, and she gladly gave it. Then he asked her for a kiss on the cheek, which she gave a little more reluctantly.

One of the other guys in the seminar watched them, amused. “Kiss her on the lips,” he suggested.

Nate looked at her. “Nah. Well…” He leaned towards her, lips already puckered.

She turned her face away. “No…”

He apologized again, but asked for her email address. “And maybe your phone number,” he added with a grin as she wrote it down. “And what you’d like to eat for dinner.”

“Why don’t you email me so you can get all that information?” she replied lightly, smiling at him again. The email address was one she hadn’t used in a long time, and one she probably wouldn’t use again after that day.

He laughed and said he would. And just before she left the room, he grabbed her and hugged her again, and kissed her hair. “Aha!” he said triumphantly, letting her go and beaming. “I caught you on the top of your head, at least!”

She smiled and left without a word.

No emails from him yet, and she hoped he’d forgotten. Men like Nate made her feel strange and cold.

Some noteworthy links for you to check out –

• Bene: Putting things in perspective. Am I obtuse, or do these moments pass blissfully by without me ever realizing it?
• Phisch: “Things I’ll miss about summer.” That sounds like a good prompt to start my own list. (Wait, you don’t do lists! -Ed. Shhhh!)
• Doug: What Are Real Christian Values? No permalinks, so scroll down to the 090604 entry. Excellent post.
• Rev. Mike: Recalling Walter Brueggemann. Brian McLaren’s got nothin’ on you, Rev.
• Hugo: A House, Cleaned By Others. The ongoing discussion in the comments of both posts are worth reading.
• Zarina: “I Want to Meet Stephen King.” Right behind ya on that one!
• David M.: What? Befriend Those People?! This post underscores a particular truth about “hating the sin and loving the sinner” that I once struggled with. Another excellent read.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Her voice contained a trace of valley chick, mingling with sharp-angled academian, but she was mostly city girl.

When she read from her book, she wasn’t an author or writer, two completely different occupations. She was an actress, her tone changing for each character, the omniscient narrator maintaining a certain amount of objectivity despite the first person view.

The reading itself was okay. When I first saw her, she looked like a schoolteacher - grades one through five, not college level. When she said she was a playwright, I was surprised.

“I found an active community in theatre that I didn’t find in writing fiction or prose,” she said. “The actors involved weren’t afraid to let me know what they thought about the script because they didn’t want to look stupid when they performed.”

Well, that made sense. That also sounded like a playwright talking.

The questions flew from the audience and from submitted index cards. They were about marketing her work and about the characters of her book which had been assigned reading, about writing in general and also about publishing. She also touched on writing influences and the process of writing - yeah, didn’t I just say she talked about publishing and writing in general? Also different things, from a writer’s perspective.

She seemed open with her answers, often pausing to phrase them so they’d satisfy the questioner. Sometimes they were an answer, sometimes not. She didn’t seem nervous to be up there, either, in front of a large group of students who weren’t shy to ask her anything, being potential novelists and playwrights themselves.

She wasn’t Danielle Steel or Tami Hoag.
She was a published author.

That was reason enough to be her audience.

PS: I hope she didn’t see me yawning. I hope the applause made up for that.

Intentional Fallacy: a “term used in 20th-century literary criticism to describe the problem inherent in trying to judge a work of art by assuming the intent or purpose of the artist who created it.”

I sat on the wrong side of the train - or so I thought.

Normally, I try to avoid the side through which the sun shines because it’s hotter than the shaded side. Normally, I try to predict which side turns out to be the sunny side when I first get on the train so I can avoid it. Normally, my prediction turns out to be wrong.

So the sun blazes down during the hourlong ride, but I keep my eyes on my reading and think that maybe my side will turn into the shaded side. Traveling east to west, one would like to make that assumption, to build up false hopes about relief from the torturous heat on a particularly hot day. Such people should keep those assumptions to themselves or sell them to professional psychologists for analysis.

Then the train plunged underground, and the sunlight disappeared completely. Whether I was right or wrong about my predictions, about what side of the train would be the right side to sit on, didn’t matter now.

The train was moving, though, and it would soon reach its destination. Perhaps the sunlight there wouldn’t be as painful to avoid as it was at that moment. Perhaps I wouldn’t have to choose sides on that end, either.

“CONSTANT VIGILANCE!” (Mad Eye Moody, a character from the HP book series)

I’ve read two-thirds of the way through the 9/11 Commission’s Report, which thoroughly reviews the events, institutions, and histories of the persons involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks. It also provides insight in the decisions of the Clinton and Bush administrations prior to and following the attacks.

With this in mind, I’ve been wondering if it would have been possible to prevent the tragedies which occurred that day. I’m not going to play the blame game and drag out the “would’ves, should’ves, and could’ves” because at this point they’re irrelevant to current counterterrorism efforts.

The reason why I say this is because the game has changed. Terrorism in the 80s and 90s, especially when it came to hijacking aircraft, involved terrorists’ demands to release their jailed comrades. On 9/11, the hijackers went beyond that and turned aircraft into missiles, forfeiting the innocent lives aboard those planes. Other terrorist strikes involved massacres to prove a point or further an ideological struggle which, in most cases, the terrorists don’t try to explain to the horrified public. Kill first, take responsibility later in the name of their god. In any case, killing someone is a given, regardless of whether or not whatever demands they make are fulfilled. One only needs to look at what’s been happening in Russia for the past week for evidence of this.

Part of me wonders how it’s possible for such human beings to exist. I pity them, more than anything. I get angry, too, because such wanton murder makes me want to lash out at similarly-aligned people who are just as determined to kill us, and yes, stop and kill them before they kill me. I realize that doesn’t jibe with Christlike behavior, but that’s the first human response I might have to a threat. It’s a response that I admit I actually like, despite what I’ve been taught and despite the fact that I know better than to react that way.

In a broader vein of thought, I don’t question that the existence of evil in this world holds a purpose, even though that purpose frequently escapes me. In light of this, is it possible for good men to physically prevent tragedies like 9/11 and the Russian school takeover? How is it possible for us to discover and disrupt terrorist plots when they have shown themselves to be patient and thorough while planning to inflict death and destruction on their enemies?

Last month, Condi Rice said, “Now, we know we have an uphill fight, because the terrorists only have to be right once. We have to be right 100 percent of the time.” (Bold emphasis mine.) She isn’t the only member of the Bush Administration to express this sentiment, which in my mind best describes the struggle we’re in.

Constant vigilance is perhaps the best weapon we have to guard against another major attack. Do I think this should involve paranoia and fear of the unknown? No. Suspicion and mistrust can only do so much when it comes to our security. We as individuals and as a nation have taken steps to ensure that a 9/11-like attack has not occurred again on our soil since 2001, while maintaining the normality of our everyday lives. Letting our guard down, however, is not and cannot be an option until the terrorists realize that their attacks are futile and concede defeat.