Our theme for the month of June is “snapshots.” Writers were asked to submit a piece with a cover photo that they took or created.
It’s one of those apocalyptic days—those days when no matter how long I haven’t been Baptist, I can’t help but think of the Book of Revelation when I look out the window.
Here in the northeastern US, “the sky [has] vanished like a scroll rolling itself up.” “Mountains and islands”—or at the least the synthetic, skyscraping ones that make up the landscape here—have been “removed from their place,” invisible behind the dense forest-fire smoke that has rolled in from Canada. And the sun might not quite be “black as sackloth,” but it’s approaching blood-red.
That’s the sixth seal, Revelation 6, for those of you following along at home.
Or another image: the two witnesses in Revelation 11. “If anyone wants to harm them,” John writes, “fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes.” Is it possible they took a wrong turn on their way to Jerusalem and landed in northern Quebec?
It gets scarier. In chapter 9, smoke rises from the “bottomless pit” and brings locusts, which are “given authority like the authority of scorpions of the earth.” No wonder my eyes sting when I go outside; the air’s full of tiny demonic scorpions.
And, worst of all, in chapter 14, “those who worship the beast” are “tormented with fire and sulfur,” and “the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever.” Smoke here is a sign of pain, of terrifying judgment, of damnation.
Now contrast all that with the voices of reason. My Twitter feed is full of air-pollution pros: residents of Seattle and Los Angeles who, despite their slight frustration with New Yorkers’ penchant for self-centered drama, are offering practical advice about which air purifiers to buy and which respiratory symptoms to watch out for. What seems apocalyptic in the Northeast is, in these places, a normal if unpleasant feature of life.
Another kind of reason: this smoke isn’t some freak supernatural event, but the indirect result of human action. Climate change has made—and will continue to make—wildfire seasons longer, more widespread, and more intense. These destructive warming trends are constant; it’s just only on days like this that we can see (and smell) them so vividly.
Which brings us back to apocalypse—literally, a revealing. Smoke obscures, but it can also make things visible: think lasers or smoke signals. This smoke is apocalyptic in that it is showing us where we are, which is well on our way to a hotter and more hostile world.
I try to hold this all together in my mind when I look outside. This is bizarre but expected, rare but normal, natural but noxious. It’s both full of meaning and as meaningless as a summer thunderstorm. It’s both the end of the world and another day in the late capitalist life.
But what frightens me a bit is how fun it is to watch. There’s a perverse pleasure in following a crisis on Twitter or TV, in refreshing your weather app to see just how high the air quality index can get. And I suspect that it’s the same feeling that draws people to the Left Behind books and their toxic theologies: it’s thrilling to watch the world burn, especially when you own an air filter, when you can afford an escape route, when you know (or think you know) you’ll be raptured. This thrill isn’t necessarily incompatible with dread or anxiety or compassion, but it can make them less immediate, less pressing.
I truly hope that humans have the wisdom and courage and capacity for solidarity required to live more peaceably with the rest of creation. There’s plenty of evidence that we do. But on days like today, that hope is tempered with fear—fear that some of us, watching from our air-conditioned apartments, are enjoying the ride too much to pull the emergency break.
Josh Parks graduated from Calvin in 2018 with majors in English and music, and he is currently a PhD student in religious studies at the University of Virginia. When not writing, he can be found learning the alto recorder, watching obscure Disney movies, and making excruciating puns.
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Whew! Always a killer last line
oh wow oh geez this is sobering