A good friend of mine just asked me if I believed in the second coming of Jesus.. wow, that stumped me.. second coming?? And then just got this seasonal card from Jim Wiegel: " maybe somewhere this greatest birth of all is about to happen"...wow, seems like all this sweet Jesus stuff again.. but something to think about *Get Off Your Donkey* Keep seeing commercials with people sitting on donkeys. It was a real mystery to me. Why were people sitting on a donkey with their iPhone, straddling and even laying on donkeys. It was cute but why was Mountain Dew having people sit on donkeys? Luckily, I was visiting my daughter in Oakland, and she explained it was asking you to *‘get off your ass!’* So, I am really into donkeys. They are supposed to be obstinate, stupid or silly. My brother uses to call me a stupid ass all the time. Hey, and it is the symbol of one of our political parties. The symbol of the Democratic party is a donkey! It seems that during Jackson’s Presidential run somebody called him a “stupid Ass” and before you knew it Jackson was everywhere with a donkey. Wherever he went there was a donkey or pictures. Amazing… seemed silly. Talking of silliness, Jesus arrived in Jerusalem on a donkey. And it was a borrowed donkey, that was a colt- a young male donkey less than 4 years old and considered wild or never having been ridden before. Strange in that Jesus was coming as the Messiah of the Jewish people-but that donkey was probably a great symbol of his coming for the common man. But they had expected a lot more than this for a new King, the one to bring back their honor and overcome their enemies- especially the Romans. But Jesus did want them to get off their ass Now, I am into Paul Kingsnorth who is trying to make sense of our times. He argues that every great civilization has given birth to a new religion. The Egyptian Civilization grew up and released the Hebrew people from slavery; in response to the great Roman Empire came the Christian faith and now we have Western Civilization (he calls it the Machine or materialistic empire) is starting the stirring of a new sense of the awe/spirit. In the Industrial society we have become just a cog in the machine, a slave- all have fallen into technology. There is a brokenness of the spirit-a kind of slavery. The Machine (think of the Matrix movie- where you sell your soul for a glass of wine and a good steak) has us trapped, has us totally at the mercy of a consumption society. And we can expect another Imperial collapse. These huge breaks in human history do not come easy, but they will come! We have talked of the collapse of Western Civilization before and the symbol of this was the atomic Bomb. The movie “On the Beach” where life on the planet earth is slowly dying off from multiple atomic bombs. Now, although the bomb is still out there, I would say the collapse of western civilization, or the industrial era is symbolized by climate change- a finite planet slowly being killed by an infinite consummation. Now you need to read Octavia Butler’s book “Parable of the Talents”: humankind consumed by environmental devastation and economic chaos that have turned us into a land of horrifying depravity. During this, an Earthseed community springs up around a new faith that teaches “God is Change”. If Butler is too harsh you might try Duane Elgin’s ‘Choosing Earth” and his estimate that by another decade of climate change there will be calamitous breakdowns. But I am with Kingsnorth, that this current ‘machine’ civilization will be the breeding ground of a new spirit, a new awareness of the mysterium tremendum, a new person on a donkey to show up. Richard Alton, Broadway UMC, older but a little bit wiser -- Richard H. T. Alton ICA Global Fund The Last Chapter United Methodist Net Zero T: 773.344.7172 richard.alton@gmail.com Make Plain the Vision, Habakkuh 2:2 Won't you be my neighbor?