AuntShecky
09-09-2008, 02:47 PM
The “Four Last Things” – or Two or Three of ‘Em
The other night I went to Hell. Well, not really, but I was watching a program about it on the History International Channel. The show opened with a segment about an American businessman in London who was suddenly stricken with a heart attack. While under intensive medical treatment, he underwent a “near death” experience. (I've had a couple o’ near death experiences myself, the latest one occurring when I accidentally tuned into Deal or No Deal.)
When we hear or read about “near death experiences,” they're mostly about a moribund patient entering a state of peacefulness and bliss as if he or she is on the threshold of heaven. Moving through an otherworldly passageway, he “goes toward the Light,” only to be sent back to this vale o’ tears, his arrival coinciding with being brought back to the realm of the living. (On the other hand, maybe he wasn't allowed to enter the tunnel because he lacked the exact change.)
The soul on the History Channel, however, reported a much less-heavenly encounter. He said that he also entered a tunnel, but it was a dark one. Out of nowhere a strange gang of black-hooded figures encircled him. They babbled taunts and curses and then started to claw and bite at him. Poor guy! Here he’s strapped to a life-support machine, and the next thing he knows he’s frantically trying to remember every defensive move he ever saw Jackie Chan do. Though not up-to-that-point a religious man, the businessman desperately invoked the name of the blessed Savior, the very utterance of which made the ghouls shrink back in alarm, as if they were New York Yankee fans suddenly reminded of the 2004 ALCS. Then quicker than you can say “David Ortiz,” this latter-day Lazarus comes back to life a changed – and undoubtedly petrified –- man.
Unlike the revived businessman, not everybody gets a second chance. In most cases if you find yourself hooked up to a machine that makes funny little beeping sounds, you can pretty much cancel the order for next year’s season tickets. The interval between life and death is often a long-drawn out one, like a particularly soporific game between the Cardinals and the Braves. Such a scenario is both unfortunate (because it makes the pain drag on) and fortunate (because it gives you a chance to say goodbye to your pals and “settle your affairs.”) If a terminal illness is the reason you're buying the farm, there is a decent interval between diagnosis and death, like a season between planning time and, uh, “planting” time. How often have we seen the scene of loved ones clustered around the dying person’s bed in a hospice or a hospital room, all of the relatives weeping, keeping prayerful vigils, and engaging in other pre-mourning rituals, such as wondering if Great Aunt Isabel has remembered them in her will and speculating as to whom she left the 40-carat diamond encrusted brooch? “O Death, where is thy bling-bling?”
Sometimes the Grim Reaper strikes faster than a general manager sending a mediocre middle reliever back down to the minors – the “here today, gone before lunch” scenario. Personal catastrophe can strike at any moment through the courtesy of a drunk driver, a stray bullet, or a bolt of lightning, though you have as much chance of being electrocuted by lightning as winning the MegaBucks Lotto. Just my luck, someday I'll actually have a winning lottery ticket, only to get hit by lightning just before getting run over by a steam roller while crossing the street on my way to cash it in.
Regardless how you go – slow or fast – you still have to go someplace else: Heaven or Hell or that alternative place for folks who like to hedge their bets, Purgatory. People also used to have the option of going to Limbo, but apparently that venue has been recently shut down, with nothing to populate it but tumbleweeds, like the site of Knoxville World’s Fair. Conventional wisdom holds that the dead can actually choose where to go, like discussing the relative merits of Cancun or the Virgin Isles with a travel agent. In George Bernard Shaw’s Don Juan in Hell, people can move back and forth between the two supernatural realms whenever they feel like it, the choice all depending on which place seems the less boring. Somebody once actually asked Mark Twain where he would like to spend the afterlife, and he said “Heaven for the climate and Hell for the company.”
On the same program with the near-death experience, a preacher stated that Hell is an actual geographical place, which I imagine resembles the state university campus in Purchase, NY. The minister explained that Hell is located deep down inside the earth, presumably above the molten rock but beneath the top soil, the oil reserves, and the 4,000 year old dinosaur fossils. Other theological types believe that Hell isn't so much a place as a “state” – - as in “state of being.” So I guess that lets Mississippi off the hook.
In addition to individual near-death experiences, the show also described certain apocalyptic predictions ( some of which can be found in biblical texts, or – as for making predictions about box office returns for Mel Gibson’s movies-- in Variety.) The stock character in panel cartoons, the ragged, bearded guy holding a sign stating “The End is Near,” has his high-tech counterpart in legions of Internet bloggers, who have made a virtual religion of adamantly affirming that the world will end on December 21, 2012. These folks are so convinced that Doomsday will occur then, that they'd probably wager their life savings on it (but if they're right, how will they collect the bet?)
As proof of their assertion, the doomsayers use predictions by Nostradamus and the Mayans. A now-extinct civilization from Central America, the Mayans built gorgeous architectural edifices. They also pressed heavy wooden boards to their faces so that their foreheads would be permanently flat. If the Mayans were right about 2012, I suppose we can't do much about it, although if I were you, I wouldn't sweat missing a couple o’ payments in your 401-K account, if you get me. I only wish that the Mayans had set the date a little earlier in that year. That way we wouldn't have to suffer through another boring Olympics or a tedious Presidential campaign. But no, it had to be December. (But at least we won't have to suffer through the Holidays.)
Some folks believe that people can obtain a Get Out of Hell Free card just before the Apocalypse. They're counting on an event called The Rapture, a notion created by a nineteenth century English preacher by the name of John Nelson Darby. Supposedly, the Rapture will come and sweep the Faithful straight up to Heaven, leaving the earth down here to look like the bleachers at a Florida Marlins home game. When I was a little girl (slightly after the 1800s), I vaguely remember going to church, but I don't recall the priest ever mentioning anything like “The Rapture” at all; mostly the sermons were concerned with making sure the parishioners had sent in their contributions to the Bishop’s Fund. But I do believe that years ago I had once had a Vision of the Rapture. I walked into a neighborhood watering hole and found the place completely desolate. Bar stools were overturned, half-empty glasses of beer were abandoned on the bar, sailing darts had stopped in mid-air, half-way to the board.
As it turned out, the reason for the abrupt departure of the bartender and patrons was not eschatological at all. Somebody had gotten wind of the fact that an insurance salesman had been heading into the bar, but before he made it through the front door, everybody had high-tailed it out the back exit faster than you can say “Jack Daniels.” They had made a quick retreat, rather than having to listen to the agent’s spiel for a second excruciating time. A repeat performance of the endless explanation of the virtues of a whole life vs. an annuity policy was more than enough Eternity for any human soul to have to endure.
The other night I went to Hell. Well, not really, but I was watching a program about it on the History International Channel. The show opened with a segment about an American businessman in London who was suddenly stricken with a heart attack. While under intensive medical treatment, he underwent a “near death” experience. (I've had a couple o’ near death experiences myself, the latest one occurring when I accidentally tuned into Deal or No Deal.)
When we hear or read about “near death experiences,” they're mostly about a moribund patient entering a state of peacefulness and bliss as if he or she is on the threshold of heaven. Moving through an otherworldly passageway, he “goes toward the Light,” only to be sent back to this vale o’ tears, his arrival coinciding with being brought back to the realm of the living. (On the other hand, maybe he wasn't allowed to enter the tunnel because he lacked the exact change.)
The soul on the History Channel, however, reported a much less-heavenly encounter. He said that he also entered a tunnel, but it was a dark one. Out of nowhere a strange gang of black-hooded figures encircled him. They babbled taunts and curses and then started to claw and bite at him. Poor guy! Here he’s strapped to a life-support machine, and the next thing he knows he’s frantically trying to remember every defensive move he ever saw Jackie Chan do. Though not up-to-that-point a religious man, the businessman desperately invoked the name of the blessed Savior, the very utterance of which made the ghouls shrink back in alarm, as if they were New York Yankee fans suddenly reminded of the 2004 ALCS. Then quicker than you can say “David Ortiz,” this latter-day Lazarus comes back to life a changed – and undoubtedly petrified –- man.
Unlike the revived businessman, not everybody gets a second chance. In most cases if you find yourself hooked up to a machine that makes funny little beeping sounds, you can pretty much cancel the order for next year’s season tickets. The interval between life and death is often a long-drawn out one, like a particularly soporific game between the Cardinals and the Braves. Such a scenario is both unfortunate (because it makes the pain drag on) and fortunate (because it gives you a chance to say goodbye to your pals and “settle your affairs.”) If a terminal illness is the reason you're buying the farm, there is a decent interval between diagnosis and death, like a season between planning time and, uh, “planting” time. How often have we seen the scene of loved ones clustered around the dying person’s bed in a hospice or a hospital room, all of the relatives weeping, keeping prayerful vigils, and engaging in other pre-mourning rituals, such as wondering if Great Aunt Isabel has remembered them in her will and speculating as to whom she left the 40-carat diamond encrusted brooch? “O Death, where is thy bling-bling?”
Sometimes the Grim Reaper strikes faster than a general manager sending a mediocre middle reliever back down to the minors – the “here today, gone before lunch” scenario. Personal catastrophe can strike at any moment through the courtesy of a drunk driver, a stray bullet, or a bolt of lightning, though you have as much chance of being electrocuted by lightning as winning the MegaBucks Lotto. Just my luck, someday I'll actually have a winning lottery ticket, only to get hit by lightning just before getting run over by a steam roller while crossing the street on my way to cash it in.
Regardless how you go – slow or fast – you still have to go someplace else: Heaven or Hell or that alternative place for folks who like to hedge their bets, Purgatory. People also used to have the option of going to Limbo, but apparently that venue has been recently shut down, with nothing to populate it but tumbleweeds, like the site of Knoxville World’s Fair. Conventional wisdom holds that the dead can actually choose where to go, like discussing the relative merits of Cancun or the Virgin Isles with a travel agent. In George Bernard Shaw’s Don Juan in Hell, people can move back and forth between the two supernatural realms whenever they feel like it, the choice all depending on which place seems the less boring. Somebody once actually asked Mark Twain where he would like to spend the afterlife, and he said “Heaven for the climate and Hell for the company.”
On the same program with the near-death experience, a preacher stated that Hell is an actual geographical place, which I imagine resembles the state university campus in Purchase, NY. The minister explained that Hell is located deep down inside the earth, presumably above the molten rock but beneath the top soil, the oil reserves, and the 4,000 year old dinosaur fossils. Other theological types believe that Hell isn't so much a place as a “state” – - as in “state of being.” So I guess that lets Mississippi off the hook.
In addition to individual near-death experiences, the show also described certain apocalyptic predictions ( some of which can be found in biblical texts, or – as for making predictions about box office returns for Mel Gibson’s movies-- in Variety.) The stock character in panel cartoons, the ragged, bearded guy holding a sign stating “The End is Near,” has his high-tech counterpart in legions of Internet bloggers, who have made a virtual religion of adamantly affirming that the world will end on December 21, 2012. These folks are so convinced that Doomsday will occur then, that they'd probably wager their life savings on it (but if they're right, how will they collect the bet?)
As proof of their assertion, the doomsayers use predictions by Nostradamus and the Mayans. A now-extinct civilization from Central America, the Mayans built gorgeous architectural edifices. They also pressed heavy wooden boards to their faces so that their foreheads would be permanently flat. If the Mayans were right about 2012, I suppose we can't do much about it, although if I were you, I wouldn't sweat missing a couple o’ payments in your 401-K account, if you get me. I only wish that the Mayans had set the date a little earlier in that year. That way we wouldn't have to suffer through another boring Olympics or a tedious Presidential campaign. But no, it had to be December. (But at least we won't have to suffer through the Holidays.)
Some folks believe that people can obtain a Get Out of Hell Free card just before the Apocalypse. They're counting on an event called The Rapture, a notion created by a nineteenth century English preacher by the name of John Nelson Darby. Supposedly, the Rapture will come and sweep the Faithful straight up to Heaven, leaving the earth down here to look like the bleachers at a Florida Marlins home game. When I was a little girl (slightly after the 1800s), I vaguely remember going to church, but I don't recall the priest ever mentioning anything like “The Rapture” at all; mostly the sermons were concerned with making sure the parishioners had sent in their contributions to the Bishop’s Fund. But I do believe that years ago I had once had a Vision of the Rapture. I walked into a neighborhood watering hole and found the place completely desolate. Bar stools were overturned, half-empty glasses of beer were abandoned on the bar, sailing darts had stopped in mid-air, half-way to the board.
As it turned out, the reason for the abrupt departure of the bartender and patrons was not eschatological at all. Somebody had gotten wind of the fact that an insurance salesman had been heading into the bar, but before he made it through the front door, everybody had high-tailed it out the back exit faster than you can say “Jack Daniels.” They had made a quick retreat, rather than having to listen to the agent’s spiel for a second excruciating time. A repeat performance of the endless explanation of the virtues of a whole life vs. an annuity policy was more than enough Eternity for any human soul to have to endure.