The middle of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

"It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine.)"  --REM

Although our weather hasn't been reflecting it much, the school year is almost over.  Tuesday was Gretchen's last day of PDO.  Most of the time she was in PDO I had a class at church, so her being in PDO was really more about her than about me having free time.  I was, however, looking forward to a few weeks of having a couple of hours a week to myself.  Once the church class ended, though, I had to go to physical therapy.  So I ended up with a grand total of one three-hour stretch of free time: the last day.

That day Doug had to go into work really early, so there was no way for me to go to the masters' swim that morning.  Instead, I went right from dropping Gretchen off to the pool.  I flipped through my little book of swim workouts and found one I liked that was 3250m.  Not being a stunningly quick swimmer, this workout took me about 80 minutes.  Add in the time to get there and change, then to shower and change again afterwards, and I only had time to make a quick stop at Lowes before going back to pick up Gretchen.  Partway through my two-mile swim I realized that I was spending my last free day just swimming.  For a few seconds I grumbled internally.  I swim a couple of times a week.  I shouldn't spend my one little piece of luxury time getting my workout in!  I should be....  And that's where the grumble stopped.  Honestly, what would I rather be doing than swimming two miles?  I am not one for shopping or manicures or any other form of expensive hedonism.  So what if swimming is ordinary and could be considered hard work?  That does not make it not worth doing.  It doesn't even make it something one cannot do with gratitude and joy.  It turned out to be a really good swim.  Maybe the fact that I chose to spend my last day doing something I do all the time anyway means that my all the time is well spent.

This last day of PDO got me thinking about all this second coming hype.  Let me first say that I think the guy who claims to know that Jesus is coming tomorrow at 6pm has some sort of self-aggrandizement psychosis.  I do not believe that the Bible was inspired in such a way that someone can use it to mathematically figure out the second coming.  Firstly, there are all the issues of translation, not to mention that it wasn't written in the scientific age when "truth" had the same meaning.  More importantly, though, Jesus pretty clearly says that God's timing is a mystery even to Jesus, and we non-God types should not to attempt to figure such things out.  So, no, I don't think there's much credence to the May 21, 2011 claim.  If Jesus does come tomorrow, I'm calling it a funny coincidence.

But since this prediction has, for some reason, gotten enough hype to be in my consciousness most of the time, and since I had the last day mentality going with PDO, I've been thinking about how I would spend this week if I truly believed everything was coming to an end on Saturday.  I came to the conclusion that there isn't much I would do differently, even if I believed it was my last week on earth.  Maybe I would have left the tar in my daughter's jacket on Monday morning, but I would have still met with my covenant group on Monday afternoon.  With whom would I rather spend my time?  I would still have swum two miles on Tuesday morning even if there was no triathlon in my future.  There isn't really one now, come to think of it.  It is just a joy to use my body, to be in water, to swim.  I would still have worked on my garden Tuesday afternoon because the world is beautiful and fertile and it's a blessing to contribute to that.  I would still have made risotto primavera for dinner because rice and vegetables taste good and  make me feel good.  I would still have gone to band rehearsal to make music one last time.  And so forth.  I would still have biked to ballet class and the bread store on Wednesday, even in the rain, because it made me feel alive.  I would still have celebrated Adam's seventh birthday on Thursday, even if there wasn't going to be an eighth, because he is a wonderful kid and those seven years are worth celebrating.  I would still have gone to his baseball game even if it doesn't matter if he learns to be a competant first-baseman.  I would still have served my sister and niece lunch and dinner.  What else of more worth would I do?  If this was the last Friday of my life, I would still have woken up at 5am this morning so that I could bike to the river to run.  Maybe I would have biked and run farther, come to think of it.   

I've been finding it easy to get that used-up, underfilled feeling lately.  I do and do and give and help and clean and cook, and to what end?  For what return?  Little praise or appreciation comes my way.  No money or recognition.  No conclusion or resolution or time off.  (Come to think of it, the second-coming might be a nice change of pace....)  Not even enough sleep.  And nothing I do stays done: it all must be done again tomorrow, if not sooner.  And while all of this will probably still be true on Monday morning when I am still here, still in the routine of do and do and give and help and clean and cook, there is great encouragement in the thought that even if I believed Jesus was coming tomorrow, I would still have wanted to do the things I did today.

I don't really blame people who, misled by the hoopla, blew off work and threw a wild party on their supposed last day on earth.  (Well, I blame them for being ignorant and gullible and probably for continuing to be such on May 22 and beyond.)  But I can't be too upset by it because how unbelievably blessed are those of us who, on their last week on earth, would choose to do pretty much what they always do with the people they see every week?  For the beauty of that realization, I'm glad the world is ending again in December of 2012.