When I was a teenager, I was incredibly bummed that I was going to be so old when the end of the millennium rolled around. I would be thirty-six. Clearly I would not be having any sort of fun for New Year’s Eve 2000.
Yet there I was in December 1999, a decrepit 36-year-old about to celebrate her entry into the Oughts. I had a new boyfriend, and we had decided to honor Y2K by skydiving for the first time on New Year’s Day. But what to do for NY Eve? There was a remote chance that the world’s computer systems would crash and cause global chaos, but I saw no reason to let that get in the way of a good time. After some consideration, I suggested that we wait for Jesus in the desert.
I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family in West Virginia, a small but significant notch in the Bible Belt. I got Saved one summer in Vacation Bible School at Maple Hill Baptist Church, a small, white, steepled building that I could see from my kitchen window. VBS required me to spend every night of a week of my precious summer vacation at church, where we studied the Bible, sang, memorized verses and made crafts with uncooked macaroni and popsicle sticks. One year I got sent home after a KoolAid skirmish with Jeff Skiles. (He started it.)
In that summer of 1973, the theme of VBS was The Rapture. According to what I learned, The Rapture was the moment when all of the Saved people (Baptists), who had accepted Jesus as their Personal Savior, would be taken up into heaven in the twinkling of an eye. People who were Lost (atheists, Catholics, Mormons, et al) would suffer seven years of Tribulation under the reign of the Antichrist. (For more details, consult the Book of Revelation, your Roadmap to the Rapture.)
As a sheltered 9-year-old girl growing up in a rural area in the 60s, the most frightening thing I had been exposed to was the Wicked Witch of the West. It is little wonder, then, that a week’s worth of the Rapture drove me straight into the arms of the Lord. After all, the Antichrist cannot be dissolved in a pail of water.
The twisted folks who created curriculum for VBS: The Rapture spared no details. After all the Baptists are gone, the Tribulation begins. The Four Horsemen ride in, saddlebags full of suffering for those who have been Left Behind. While the Saved walk on streets of gold and hang out with Jesus, the Lost suffer plagues of indestructible locusts, rains of hail, blood and fire, poisoned water supply, famine, pestilence, earthquakes, the Battle of Armageddon… you get the picture.
It took only a few nights of increasingly disturbing "lessons" before making my decision. When the preacher offered his nightly invitation to the Lost, I bolted for the altar with a dozen other frightened children. There was simply no good reason to stick around for the Tribulation, especially when escaping it required little more than walking up to the altar and having somebody pray over me.
My cousin Madge greeted me at the altar. We knelt down, and she asked me if I wanted to accept Jesus as my Personal Savior. She prayed and told God what I wanted, then asked me if I felt better. I nodded, not wanting to hurt her feelings. I didn’t feel any different. I didn’t feel like shouting or weeping like some of the adults I had seen when they got Saved. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to feel. I had hoped for some kind of spiritual pat on the back from God welcoming me to the ranks of the Saved. Despite my disappointment, I felt fairly confident that I had escaped the horrors that were in store for the Lost.
As I got older, I gradually abandoned Christianity, although I didn’t abandon the idea of God. I adopted Sri Ramakrishna’s philosophy that all paths lead to God. I’ve offered prayers in Hindu temples in India, Buddhist temples in Burma, Episcopal churches in Encino. I’m still a fan of Jesus and get tired of seeing him co-opted by hatemongers. (My favorite refrigerator magnet says “Stop using Jesus as an excuse for being a narrowminded, bigoted asshole”.)
So when Y2K approached and tales of the world’s end began resurfacing, I thought this New Year’s Eve might be the moment the Baptists were waiting for. It made sense for Jesus to reappear and sweep the believers up into Heaven before the computers started crashing. I wasn't convinced that I'd be accompanying Him on the trip back -- my childhood salvation probably got revoked the minute AC/DC planted my teenage feet on the Highway to Hell. Regardless, I wanted a good seat for the Rapture, someplace with a broad view of the heavens with little chance of Jesus appearing behind a billboard.
My boyfriend and I decided to head to Joshua Tree National Monument, where the Martian landscape and rock formations would offer a spectacular setting below miles and miles of black, starry skies, no buildings or streetlights in sight.
We booked a small motel in Twentynine Palms near the park entrance. December nights in the desert can drop below freezing, so we bundled up in layers of what passes for winter clothes in Southern California. Shortly before midnight, we drove into the national park and looked for a suitable rock formation to serve as our viewing platform. We parked, walked to a nearby cluster of boulders and scrambled up. It was perfect. Jesus would be hard to miss.
We shivered beneath the sparkling black skies on our cold hard perch until a few minutes past midnight, waiting just in case my watch was running ahead. We wished ourselves a Happy New Year, climbed down and drove back to the warmth of our cheap motel room. We turned on the TV to confirm that the global computer network had not crashed. The next day, we defied death and jumped out of an airplane, faces flapping as we fell through the sky.
I realize that my idea of fun doesn't always sound appealing to other people. That didn't matter to me. What mattered was the notion that I'd successfully thumbed my nose at that snarky teenage Lisa, who could never have imagined an old fogey of 36 having such a unique New Year's celebration.
What was your most memorable New Year's Eve?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment