ALL ABOARD!
Hanns F Skoutajan
“Air Canada Flight 251 is in its final boarding process. All passengers should now be on board.” The line-up at the gate had dwindled to a mere trickle as one after the other passengers pass by the check-in desk and enter the passageway to the aircraft.
Then a loud shout could be heard. Racing down the hall trundling their carry-on cases two more passengers wildly waving their boarding passes and passports rush for the gate - just in the last moment. Behind them the door closes and the flight is ready for departure.
I mentioned to my oncologist that I suspected that I am in my “final boarding process.”
He chuckled but didn’t want to make any rash predictions about my date of departure. He did, however, remind me that people of my tender years are all in their final boarding process. Departure might not be imminent. It isn’t in my case.
As we approach the end of the year there are also speculations about the future. We live in a turbulent world, armed to the teeth, some of them weapons of mass destruction. Wars, as in Syria and South Sudan, are devastating the people and country. There are serious questions as to how we shall feed the billions that are crowding this planet. How much time have we left - has civilization left, - has this planet Earth left?
There are those religious fanatics who take pleasure in end time conjectures, who like to remind everyone of those biblical visions of the end, in the Old Testament in Joel 2 : 10, but also in the New Testament in Matthew 2 : 24 - 29, about the sun being darkened and the moon losing light, the stars falling from heaven being shaken by the last turbulence. Among them is Harold Camping, a broadcaster in the United States who stirred consternation , ecstasy and complaints to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. He predicted twice in 2011 that the end of the world is nigh. But he beat the world to its demise as he died on Dec. 15th in California, of course. He is just one of a host of other prophets of doom.
Astrophyisicists also speculate about the end as they do about the beginning, the Big Bang and the Big Crunch and perhaps another Big Bang and “deja vu all over again.” Hans Küng, the noted Tübingen (Germany) theologian, writes in his book, The Beginning of All Things : Science and Religion, that “in around 5 billion years from now the Andromeda Galaxy will collide with the Milky Way and billions of stars will be hurled around the universe. At the same time, the sun will swell into a red giant. Then all life on our Earth will die out.”
5 billion years seems like a lot of time for a final boarding process. Rather than being obsessed with End Times, biblical or astrophysical, the dwellers on this planet need to be concerned about the quality of life of all its inhabitants.
My oncologist and I discussed what therapies we should take to preserve quality rather than quantity of life. We all love life, I do, and want to have as much of it as possible , but what kind of life?
Thus as we stand at the portal of another year I cannot help but wonder what is to come not just for my earthly body but for the world that our bodies inhabit.
Unfortunately many of those dwellers of time and space are desperately avaricious. We are determined to mine the earth’s resources ignoring the havoc caused as can be seen at Fort McMurray and surroundings. Quality of life, it seems, is constituted by the bottom line. Living responsibly and sustainably is trumped by accumulation. We like to forget that we are indeed in a final boarding process.
For me quality of life has everything to do with my family, just as humankind needs to think about its human family, about living in peace and harmony with one another and with this God-given environment. The final boarding process is not meant to be a time when we hoard up what’s left. Our carry-ons can hold just so much.
Whether you believe that there is something beyond the boarding gate is not the point.
Testifying to his faith, Küng, does not believe in the “dying of the light” but entering fully into the light of God’s love. He has wagered his life on that belief but admits that he is aware of the abiding risk of this wager. “But I am convinced, “ he affirms, “ that even if I lose this wager in death, I will in all events have lived a better, happier, more meaningful life than if I had not had hope.”
It is with this conviction that we need to approach the departure gate whether that be in the new year or in some time to come. The final boarding process is nevertheless upon us . Be not afraid. Live lovingly.
Happy New Year!
SQ 27/ 12/ 2013
