Focus: Now the Green Blade Riseth

According to scholar Richard Erdoes (AD 1000, NY: Harper & Row, 1988) the very last day of the year 999 was quite a spectacle. A mass of weeping and terrified people crowded into St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, counting down the minutes to the Day of Wrath "when the earth would dissolve into ashes." Many folks had given away all that they owned, hoping to assure for themselves some measure of forgiveness in the face of the wrath to come. Some of the worshippers actually wore sackcloth and doused themselves with ashes. Some had spent weeks and even months mortifying their flesh and doing other severe acts of penance.

Others went to Jerusalem, since scholars were certain that the Second Coming of Christ would occur at the stroke of midnight, and that the last Judgement would happen at that holy place. An immense, devastating army of pilgrims swarmed Jerusalem, hoping that this sacred place would afford them some mercy before the judgement seat.

Adding to people's paranoia, a number of portents and signs appeared. French nuns saw "fiery armies fighting in the sky." So they started a procession and said prayers to ward off the ruin at hand. In Aquitaine, the sky rained blood, spattering people's clothes with crimson spots that could not be washed out.

It was a terrifying time, and I'm sure that though many people were relieved that the apocalypse had not, in fact, occurred, there were some who felt the first dawn of the year 1000 to be somewhat anticlimactic. And if you were one of those who had sold all you had, I'm sure you were very angry indeed!

Our own turning of the millennium is not lacking for prophets of doom. Even from my own family I have received invitations to wait out the Y2K disaster in the country, away from the riots and pandemonium sure to strike in the cities.

I am writing this before January 1st, and you will be reading it after, so you, dear reader, will have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. If civilization does grind to a halt, this column will seem flip and ill-advised (but then you're not likely to be reading it, so I'm safe!), but if all is well, as I expect it to be, then you may all be thinking, "What were we all so worked up about, anyway?" Yet all of this apocalyptic talk has given me a lot of food for thought, about how we think about "the end" and perhaps our lack of vision about new beginnings.

As the Revelation of St. John makes clear, people in Jesus' day were similarly looking forward to a time when heaven's armies would ride out of the sky and vanquish their foes, in this case, the Roman Empire. The old order would be destroyed and God would reign through the Messiah in Jerusalem. But the Messiah didn't come like that, and Jesus never bought into this kind of eschatology, where bloodshed and terror are the order of the day. Instead, he horrified his listeners by saying "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and has anointed me and sent me to announce glad tidings to the poor; to proclaim release for prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind; to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the year of God's favor" (Luke 4:18-19). This is the sort of apocalypse Jesus promises, the sort of eschatological vision he intends: an end to a world that promotes bondage, blindness, and oppression; and the dawning of sight and release and liberty.

For Jesus, the end of the world is not a cataclysmic, cosmic battle, but a personal battle, fought on the field of the heart. As the Muslims say, true Jihad is fought within. This Holy War is with us in every waking moment.

The only apocalypse we might experience on the eve of December 31st will be a personal one. The end of days will not happen with a war in the sky and the host of heaven descending upon the Holy City, but within the hearts of each person who is open to the experience. As Bono of the rock group U2 once said, "I can't change the world, but I can change the world in me." This changing, this metanoia is what we are all about in our ministry as spiritual directors.

In this issue we have plenty of examples of personal apocalypse. Mary Earle describes the devastating impact of illness in the lives of her directees, and the ingenious way she discerned to "read" her clients' illness using the same techniques as one would in lectio divina.

Loretta Ross-Gotta writes about the difficult transition "city folk" often have to make when they come to the country for retreat in her fine article on "Rural Spiritual Direction." Very often, disentangling and detaching from civilization can feel like a death of sorts, but the pasture speaks of healing and rebirth.

Gordon Self also deals with personal apocalypse on a daily basis in his role as hospital chaplain. In his article on spiritual direction in the health care industry "A Little Soul Work Does a Hospital Well," he explores exactly how hurting souls can best be tended to in such a place of continual crisis.

Dorothy Whiston speaks directly to this issue of apocalypse in her very personal and enjoyable scriptural reflection on the second coming, "Apocalypse Now and Again!"

For all of this doom flying about, however, this issue is far from gloomy. It is full of the hope and promise of new life that follows on the heels of all cataclysms, cultural and personal. Adding to the celebratory spirit are Joseph Driskill's article on "Spiritual Guidance in a Mainline Protestant Context" and our special "Year 2000 'Best of the Web' for Spiritual Directors" article.
I reckon that by the time you read this, we will all be sick to death of doomsayers and apocalypticism. Some of us already are! Yet I hope that most of us will be sensitive enough to the archetypal dimension of this event to give some attention to the internal endings, and equally important beginnings it portends.

On January first, I will not be expecting an army to ride out of the sky, or for the battle of Armageddon to commence. Instead, I plan to nurse a quiet cup of coffee, and sing "Now the Green Blade Riseth" to the world from my porch. I plan to hail the return of the sun god after months of cold and increasing dark. I plan to celebrate the resurrection of humanity, reborn in a new era. I plan to sing the hope of a renewed and restored planet, of God's Community come, on earth as it is in heaven, and of my own restoration as well.
-John R. Mabry