The End Of The World And The Approach Of Summertime – OpEd

May 21, 2011July 31, 2022 Paul Woodward - War in Context 0 Comments

Where will you be at 6pm US Eastern on Saturday when the Great Earthquake strikes? I haven’t decided, but I think I’ll take the day off.

For those who imagine life is like a movie, here’s a song fit for the closing credits — and, for those of us in the northern latitudes, the approach of summer.

Angelique Kidjo sings Gershwin’s Summertime in her native language, Fon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLHMikicfd4&feature=player_embedded

I’ll be back Sunday… or maybe not.

Meanwhile, David Barnett reports:

Tomorrow is the end of the world as we know it, folks – or at least it is according to US Christian broadcaster Harold Camping, who has calculated that 21 May is Judgment Day. Camping, who runs the Family Radio network in the US, has offered several “infallible proofs” that the Rapture – when God will welcome all good and just souls into the kingdom of heaven – will occur tomorrow.

Good Christians have known for a long time what to expect, of course. The New Testament’s 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 lays it out pretty neatly: “… and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord”. Stirring stuff, but it’s not the only Judgment Day guide. Modern, literary primers are in plentiful supply – and chief among them is the Left Behind series of books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B Jenkins.

LaHaye’s own website describes him as “a noted author, minister, and nationally recognised speaker on Bible prophecy”. He and Jenkins are also, one imagines, not short of a bob or two – Jenkins’s site says the series has sold 70m copies worldwide. So presumably, camels and eyes of needles being what they are, the non-believers are not all that’ll be left behind by 22 May.

(For those unfamiliar with antiquated English colloquialisms, a “bob” is a shilling or 12 pence in Britain’s old currency.)

Paul Woodward - War in Context

Paul Woodward describes himself by nature if not profession, as a bricoleur. A dictionary of obscure words defines a bricoleur as “someone who continually invents his own strategies for comprehending reality.” Woodward has at various times been an editor, designer, software knowledge architect, and Buddhist monk, while living in England, France, India, and for the last twenty years the United States. He currently lives frugally in the Southern Appalachians with his wife, Monica, two cats and a dog Woodward maintains the popular website/blog, War in Context (http://warincontext.org), which "from its inception, has been an effort to apply critical intelligence in an arena where political judgment has repeatedly been twisted by blind emotions. It presupposes that a world out of balance will inevitably be a world in conflict."

Paul Woodward - War in Context

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