As We Know It
Driving to an appointment the other day, I caught an old favorite on the radio, REM’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It.” Never mind that it was playing on the oldies station, that song is a banger. It’s nearly impossible to get all the lyrics of the verses, a tongue twister litany of feelings and observations that fly by at breakneck speed. But the chorus? Well, that’s totally sing-able, right up there with the best pop earworms. You can hardly sing the hook in the chorus, “and I feel fine,” without a smile on your face and at the top of your lungs if you’re in the car by yourself.
It was surprisingly cathartic, singing that line over and over until the fade. Even if the spirit is sarcastic or ironic, once the song hits the airwaves it belongs to me. To put it mildly, there’s not a lot I feel “fine” about. Does it feel like the world as we know it is ending? Not really; that already happened. It’s fair to say that the world as we knew it ended almost a decade ago. And a decade or two before that, and before that...
That’s not my glib take on the unimaginable horrors and injustices playing out every day, at the hands of cruel and irresponsible leaders. Rather it’s a check on my own inclination to fall down the rabbit hole of dread and sadness. I don’t have that luxury and neither do you. It’s certainly true that our great grandchildren will look back on this time and read about it in school, with the same disbelief we had when we read about the inhumanities of earlier times. Our part of this story will be that we didn’t give into hopelessness and helplessness. Our part is to hope and to help, to pray and nurture, to fight and to vote, to build and reclaim for our children a world that begins again, with more peace and humanity than the one we have today.
Dear One,
For your constant care and for the grace of new beginnings, we give you thanks. Give us the energy and strength to extend that care to others so that we can be about the business of rebuilding a broken world.
Amen
Eli’s practice of help and hope begins with her husband (very patient listener of rants), along with her wildly intuitive daughter, and newly minted middle school teacher son, and the best and prettiest girl dog, Pepper, whose world ends every time she’s left alone at home and she feels fine.