Categories
2020 vision apocalyptic

Apocalyptic Times

Llyn Crafnant 3rd March 2024 photographed by myself

Yes apocalyptic can look as much like a sun-kissed Welsh llyn [lake] as it can those “end of the world” movies some of us love to watch.

Do you get it sometimes when you’re listening to something and someone says something and you want to jump up and down and tell the world? This is my space to tell the world – or at least you my dear subscribers. Some posts I really really hope get out there to loads of people and some I’m a bit embarrassed by and some, like this one, I am writing because I cannot contain what is going on in my head and cannot yet find a way of bringing it up when out dog walking 🙂

I was listening to Drew Jackson [yes I have been banging on about Drew and the podcast on Godspace but, for me, it has been amazing]. There is one point, in talking about his poetry that he calls it apocalyptic, and then says that we are living in apocalyptic times. He then explains that, for him, apocalyptic times mean “unveiling times” and not so much as we’ve come to think of them as “end of the world as we know it times” – though it is a bit like that too. But it is much more about things, structures, being unveiled.

I was so excited because I had written around this from 2020 onwards in various forms, and keep saying to my husband when another “unveiling” of something corrupt comes on the news that, I think, the whole of the 2020s – until the end of 2029 – will be a time of unveiling, a time of relooking at things and saying “that’s not right” – governments, health care, education, racism, sexism, gender issues, climate change, nature issues, homelessness, poverty, materialism, the whole Israel/Palestine, Russia/Ukraine, and more that are not coming to mind at the moment. And more that I’m sure you can name.

This is what the book of Revelation talks about, what Jesus talked about when he said about the end times. It may not mean the world is going to end and we will all go off to heaven, or wherever. It means, as Drew said, apocalyptic times are times of unveiling, times of revealing what’s wrong in our systems. A time to change.

At the event I was at last week one of the women speaking said about how things are changing with regard to clairvoyants and how the understanding of spirituality is changing. She said how she believed that the control of religious structures was lifting and people are starting to explore different ways of being. All the way through that day there was an understanding that people are starting to realise that we buzz with energy, and that we do affect others by our energy and other people’s energy affects us. A lot of QEC is about changing your energy as you are healed from your traumas.

Again these things are unveilings, are changes, are seeing things that were there all along but were hidden. As Christians we need to make sure we don’t stay in our safe boxes but that we get rebellious, get out there and explore what is being unveiled. Get out there and really live in these apocalyptic times without fear. I believe it is what God talks of in the Bible but there has been a fear about it. Instead we need to view it as exciting, as change, as seeing things differently.

Also the reason for the above photo is that the sun still shines, the lakes are still beautiful, families still go out and walk their dogs. Things being unveiled does not mean the end but the in-between space before we go into a new beginning.

But again for me personally the most exciting thing from all this was that Drew was saying what I had been thinking. So if he is and I am and things on Christine’s Liturgical Rebels podcasts are saying things then … let’s be awake and aware and responsive.

Categories
2020 blacklivesmatter change Change the world Covid-19 deeper lockdown pandemic racism

20/20 Perfect Vision

perfectvision-1024x413-1
Image taken from https://ubcrembert.org/perfect-vision-20-20/ 

2020 they said was the going to be the year of perfect vision – Twenty twenty vision! Then they panicked because suddenly we were all locked inside, unless we were key workers. Suddenly they were talking about how this lockdown/pandemic had been predicted before. Lots of prophecies bouncing out. But not once, at least on the ones I listened to, did I hear anything about this 20/20 vision.

Let me list the things I think this year of 2020 is revealing: (&these are in no particular order so apologies if some look like they are of more importance. That is not my intention)

  • who the key workers really are. Not just health and care workers but delivery drivers, both food and parcels, those who empty the bins, not just our household ones but the ones in the parks and streets, the takeaway food and coffee workers, those who work in food producing factories. I’m sure I’ve missed some.
  • the fragility of the world economy
  • poverty and how people teeter on the edge and losing 20% of their wages pushes them over the edge
  • the huge one that is causing riots and protests across the world – including social media infiltrations via K-Pop fans – is racism. Not just slurs and comments but institutionalised racism.
  • But this is also showing how connected the world is and how people don’t agree with all that is going on and will speak out, will do something. And perhaps it is because so many are at home and have time to do something about it. I am seeing websites starting gathering info, people doing things they would not have had the time or energy to do.
  • Not forgetting climate change
  • Domestic violence
  • Child abuse – interesting how during this time Police say they may have found the real abductor of Madeline McCann which happened so many years ago. Things coming into the light, things being truly seen
    mental health issues
  • the fragility and incompetence of our government and other governments around the world
  • the strange system in the USA where one man speaks for all no matter how sound he is

But you know what? All these issues have been raised before. It seems not so long ago another middle aged black man was crying out “I can’t breath” but things did not explode like they have done. It did not become a worldwide thing. Why now? Some say it is because people have less to do, but I would like to raise the issue of 20/20 vision, the prediction that this year we would see things clearly.

It looks too like I might not be the only one thinking this. Here is this great poem by Leslie Dwight going around which says
“What if 2020 is the year we’ve been waiting for? ⁣
A year so uncomfortable, so painful, so scary, so raw —
that it finally forces us to grow,”
“⁣A year that screams so loud, finally awakening us
from our ignorant slumber.⁣
A year we finally accept the need for change.⁣
Declare change. Work for change. Become the change.”
“A year we finally band together, instead of⁣
pushing each other further apart.⁣⁣

2020 isn’t cancelled, but rather ⁣
the most important year of them all.”⁣

[accessed 5th June 2020 on https://www.instagram.com/p/CA_CXcBp7Rg/?utm_source=ig_embed and https://www.today.com/news/what-if-2020-isn-t-canceled-inspiring-poem-message-change-t183397%5D

 

What if we can look back on 2020 and say that things really did change, that we would not settle for what was again. I must say I am so proud of my daughter and others being brave and going out there and protesting. That takes courage. But they aren’t just doing that. They are reading, they are learning, they are looking, really looking with their eyes wide open.