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Nothing to fear but fear itself
Winter was a long time leaving this year. It seemed we were stuck inside for most of it, often driven to the idiot box in the living room to stave off cabin fever. There are a couple of channels that never fail to amuse, if not educate. The History channel and the Discovery channel got a lot of viewing time as we snuggled under quilts to keep the thermostat low.
Armegeddon seemed to be the order of the day, or season if you will, with forecasters looking at global warming, earthquakes, calderas, tsunami, asteroids... The list was endless. And there seemed to be no shortage of experts on either side of the fence. The general consensus, however, was not "if" but rather "when."
It's a wonder anyone can sleep at night.
According to these experts, our lives are in constant peril, not only from the usual suspects - heart attacks, cancer, car accidents, plane crashes, etc., but death on an apocalyptic scale also is but a breath away.
It would be amusing if only it weren't true.
In addition to the natural disasters touted all winter long on cable television, there are the nations that rage around us.
After all, North Korea is taking great pains these days to flex its missile muscles for the world to see, and apparently, they'd like nothing better than to make the United States nothing more than a smoking hole in the ground.
Iran's president has spoken plainly of his desire to erase all evidence of Israel from that same world map, and those are just two of many nations that rage, that plot and scheme the demise of Western Civilization,
It's getting harder each day to keep track of the players without a scorecard and harder still these last several days with the untimely death of a superstar taking center stage night after night after night.
"This night your soul is required of thee..." from Luke 12:20, keeps coming to my mind as people mourn the loss of the comeback tour cut short when Michael Jackson died. Seems he had one more grain barn to build, or so he thought.
What is the source of all of this fear? Mankind has after all, lived with death since our eviction from the Garden.
We fear death. And we should at the very least, consider it. It is our appointed end, as it is "appointed unto every man once to die." What happens when we die? Do we just wink out like a candle consumed? Do the dead know they're dead? Or do we just cease to be, no thought, no pain, no peril, no fear?
Philosophers have asked this question since time out of mind, but my favorite question remains the one from "The Bard" himself, when Hamlet is considering the peace of the grave, but ponders in Shakespeare's famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy, the phrase "perchance to dream..." followed by the more ominous "dread of something after death" from whence no "traveler returns."
Summing it up, he confesses "thus conscience doth make cowards of us all."
If conscious is to be considered, again, it's a wonder any of us can sleep at night.
The pages of this newspaper, the one that preceded it and the one that will follow on the morrow reveal that we, individually and collectively, have little to be proud of and much for which to feel guilty. It has ever been thus, but seems to be increasing with each successive generation. In fact, if we were to be brutally honest with ourselves, if we would set aside our cowardice from conscience for the merest breath and take a good hard look into our hearts, we would have to say that at the very least, we are deserving of death -- if not the full wrath of God unleashed by those natural disasters so in vogue on television.
I don't think our fears define us as clearly as what we fail to fear may. What we do not fear impacts our actions, our choices, even our relationships, easily as much as our fears impact our actions, our choices, even our relationships. What we fail to fear, in fact, can become our undoing.
The question posed by the second thief on the cross to his belligerent, cursing neighbor, in Luke 23:40, 41, "Do you not fear God? For we are getting what our deeds deserve..." is one we may have left unasked and unanswered far too long.