I'm Not Ready

"The religious and secular have so interpenetrated one another that a real question emerges to where sacredness resides...in God or in goods."

Quoted from Heaven on Earth: Consumption at Heritage Village, USA by Thomas C. O'Guinn and Russell W. Belk, 1989 Journal of Consumer Research, Inc.

I have been peripherally aware that for many years retailers and consumers have been, as author David Radosh says, "bending [evangelical] messages to pop-culture forms." I knew there was "Christian Retailing Magazine," a trade publication, and an enormous retail market called the Christian Retail Show that sells everything from Smiley Crosses to men's cologne purporting to smell like Jesus. Americans spent more than seven billion dollars on Christian themed products in 2006, and they weren't things like kneeling rails or communion chalices.

Since I'd been an inquisitive follower of the mega trend in New Age tchotchkes since the 80s, and marveled (with delight) at the weird array of goods in the metaphysical market, I could hardly miss the parallels in the Christian universe. I am not being derisive here – a person who owns more Tibetan Buddhist paraphernalia than a genuine Tibetan Buddhist is hardly in any position to throw stones at spiritual consumption. A woman who bought a $250 brass singing bowl in a Santa Cruz crystal shop, circa 1993 (when they were still hard to come by) needs to be very careful who she criticizes for their shopping folly.

Still, I am fascinated by the juxtaposition of the sacred internal experience of spirituality, and its external commercial counterpart. I imagine Jesus confronted by a member of the Christian Pirate movement (eye patch, puffy shirt, striped pantaloons…the works) or Buddha examining a Buddha Energy and Abundance Manifestation Pendant and wonder, "What would Jesus think? What would Buddha say?" Neither of those teachers were big shoppers.

But, I totally understand the acquisition of stuff. I've got stuff. And I'm likely to keep compiling stuff at some variable rate as long as I am alive. I may not want a "Smile! God Loves You!" fanny pack or a box of Gospel Golf Balls imprinted with bible messages (endorsed by one clergyman as being "the most effective [Christian] tool I have ever seen in golf!"), but I resonate with the impulse to buy objects that reflect faith, values and belief.

Without it, there would be fewer Franklin Mint purchases, fewer Thomas Kincaide fuzzy-light studies, no inspirational plaques exhorting you to "Breathe" and "Imagine", or Zen tabletop fountains. We relate to the messages conveyed by objects, so buying and owning them is psychologically satisfying.

Nevertheless, my awareness of spiritual materialism was confined to the physical – Do-It-Yourself Feng-Shui kits, diet books entitled "What Would Jesus Eat?", essences to align chakra energy, sandals with "Follow Jesus" die-cut into the tread, etc. Or, the kinds of esoteric spiritual services for sale that, maybe, didn't fit in a shopping bag (like Trance Dance, or The Great Passion Play in Eureka Springs), but were at least designed to enhance my psyche or entertain me. But I was certain that the real stuff of faith – compassion, communion, contemplation, forgiveness, eternal life – were just not for sale, because they couldn't be packaged. It never occurred to me that entrepreneurs could develop a system to organize and manage my faith so I don't have to!

Then my friend, Sky, sent me a Web site offering me a whole new spiritual consumption opportunity on which I had never reckoned – Rapture Services. I had, heretofore, figured that God would take care of all of my afterlife requirements, however they manifest, since it's His party. Like any invitation, it's the host's responsibility to tell you when and where to go, what to wear, what to bring and what to expect from the occasion. Learning that I can't just rely on the Almighty to make the arrangements as promised is new information.

When I was a young Lutheran and working my way through the catechism, my concerns were relatively simple. I understood from my Sunday school teacher that a wise Luther Leaguer made some sort of effort to be prepared for a Second Coming. My to-do list, however, was short.

One: I needed to believe. That was a no-brainer. Who didn't believe? Everyone believed...even if I had a few suspicions and couldn't quite get anyone to provide any specifics, my doubts lay in the details, not in the event itself. Like, you know you're going to see Clapton at an arena near you because it's on his touring schedule and the stadium holds 40,000, but you may not already know how you're getting there or where you're going to park.

Two: I understood that even though Lutherans don't roll with the idea of the Rapture (it's just not very Lutheran to imagine being zapped out of your mini-van while driving 60 miles per/hour on your way to your Pilates class – way too dramatic)*, I should never be found engaging in behaviors or activities that could be interpreted as unbecoming to a Lutheran believer.

This, also, was fairly easy to accomplish. I grew up in a small, remote, hill country burg and we were just vice-challenged. There must have been some sort of sin available some where in town, but beyond gossip and the balcony of the Palace picture show, I never found any.

But these are different times, and mere belief and upright behavior are no longer sufficient. If you are currently alive, there are more organizational challenges that you will have to overcome if you're going to effectively manage your End of Days. I'm not ready, but then, apparently, I don't need to be.

Fortunately, I (and by extension, you) can outsource at least some of my Rapture planning to a company who can offer me a variety of options for Document Storage and Rapture Triggered email Messaging Systems. Thanks to the helpful Rapture Consultants at www.youvebeenleftbehind.com/index.html, we won't have to face eternity with our personal files in a tangled mess or leave our email unanswered.

Nor will your friends and colleagues, who didn't quite make the cut, be standing around asking each other, "So, what happened to Alonso and Babs? They weren't at the Fehrenbach's fondue party the other night and they didn't show up for Jason's soccer playoff. Is their Winnebago in their garage?"

From what I understand, Rapture is sort of a pre-Second Coming. Those who miss the obvious on the first go-round and are left behind immediately following Rapture will go through a "tribulation period." Although, this would be a good time for all of us who have ascended to gloat and say "too bad; so sad", there remains a small window of opportunity when the laggards and heathens may reassess their former spiritual ambivalence and get on board.

Now, I must say if I am standing on a smoldering planet and anything resembling a seven-headed, ten-horned dragon ambles by, AND I happen to notice that all my rapture-ready friends have vanished in an instant without so much as a promise to send a post card, I probably won't need much targeted micro-marketing. I won't quibble about which preacher wrote what and when he wrote it. But that's just me. I'm quick on the uptake.

But, You've Been Left Behind understands that some of your loved ones are kind of slow, stubborn or both. Anticipating your need, YBLB provides a service to coax your friends and relatives into faith by sending them pleas to repent following each fulfilled prophesy – it's "one last chance to bring them from the flames."

How is this accomplished, you may well ask? For a small annual service fee, YBLB provides the following AFTER Rapture uploads you to Heaven and you are terminally off-line:

up to 250mb of documents
Send up to 62 individual email addresses
150Mb encrypted document storage
100mb unencrypted document storage
You can edit documents any time
Write your own documents or choose from some of ours

We have set up a system to send documents by the email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the "Rapture" of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system.

We give you 150mb of encrypted storage that can be sent to 12 possible email addresses, in Box #1. You upload any documents and choose which documents go to whom. You can edit these documents at any time and change the addresses they will be sent to as needed. Box #1 is for your personal private letters to your closest lost friends and relatives. We give you another 100mb of unencrypted storage that can be sent to up to 50 email addresses, in Box #2. You can edit the documents and the addresses any time. Box #2 is for more generic documents to lost family & friends.

The cost is $40 for the first year. Re-subscription will be reduced as the number of subscribers increase. Tell your friends about You've Been Left Behind.*

This new spiritual wrinkle is creating some anxiety for me, and I feel the need of tech support. (Hopefully, YBLB is prepared to outsource this to a country where the primary faith does not include Rapture and we'll be connected to someone overseas, whether or not we can understand the answer.) I'm not completely illiterate, but I'm no computer wizard either. I expect to ascend in a cloud of glory, but I kind of need to know if the YBLB operating systems are compatible with whatever they're running in Paradise. With all the destruction and plague on earth, will I still be able to enjoy wireless internet access? I know my Father's house has many mansions, but is there also WiFi?

Will I be able to edit my documents AFTER I ascend? Am I allowed to take my flash drive with me and is Paradise running Word 2007, which baffles me? I'm a PC user, and I'm guessing that Heaven is Mac friendly, so should I take a few classes at the Institute of Technology or community college as soon as I see any one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse?

But my questions are simple and user-based. My old college friend-of-my-friend-Sky, Bradley, is an Information Technology guy and he had more complex operating questions:

Being that I am an administrator for Microsoft SharePoint Server (one of the leading portal/document management systems in the market today), I am well aware of how these document storage and knowledge management systems work. I have questions. Do these Rapture documents have to be stored in a hierarchical construct? Meta tagged? Have password governance? The I.T. department in heaven must really know their stuff!!! (But, I bet they still can't get a password reset for an angel in a cubicle somewhere without a window within three days.)

I am perpetually around programmers, programming, information systems and the like, and I am amazed to learn that there is actually a "Document storage and Rapture-triggered email messaging system." I mean, on what platform is this system based? Are we talking Exchange/Outlook from Microsoft? Lotus Notes from IBM?

I don't know, yet, if YBLB will answer Bradley's inquiry. None of the Seven Deadly Sins include document storage mismanagement; there is no lost commandment that warns, "thou shallt not misrepresent data retrieval capability." So, I suspect that YBLB is not going to have to be accountable to anyone upstairs.

Also, customer satisfaction isn't going to really be an issue, because once it becomes necessary for anyone to actually use YBLB services, they aren't going to be in any position to lodge a complaint or file a class action suit. It's a sweet business plan – sell support services for an unpredictable event to consumers who will no longer be among the living (in the normal sense, anyway) when those services go into effect, or fail, as the case may be. You gotta admire the ingenuity, if not the actual scheme.

Myself? I'm not much concerned about the afterlife of my email or my documents, or Rapture either, for that matter. I'm going to follow Buddha's suggestion, "Do your best." And hang on tight to my singing bowl, just in case I get to take something with me.

* Notions of Rapture, the antichrist and one-world government were introduced by John Nelson Darby in the 1830s and are not, generally, accepted by Catholics or mainline Protestants as having a scriptural basis. As I understand it, the whole Rapture concept wasn't included in any printed Bible until a convict named Cyrus Scofield had a jailhouse conversion and ended up printing the Scofield Reference Bible around 1908. His annotations of Darby's theories became so common that by mid-century, Americans began to proclaim them as part of their faith, confusing the annotations with actual biblical scripture.

** I'm a wee bit concerned that YBLB is offering to provide document and message templates for you if you don't have confidence in your abilities to write your own. I edited the quoted paragraph for grammar and spelling, since YBLB did not. Even if Rapture is imminent, there is no excuse for not using your spell check.

Note: All information regarding Christian-related retail and products, as well as the origins of the Scofield Reference Bible come from Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture, author Daniel Radosh, 2008 (Scribner).

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Ingrid is currently living and respectably employed in Austin, Texas with a firm specializing in environmental law. She hopes to get back home to the San Juan Islands next spring to stay.
While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Besides a passion for Tiki Studies, Ingrid is borderline biblio-obsessive. She is an old-school Libran - i.e., she won't be leading the Revolution, but she'll work to make it an attractive affair and hire the musicians and caterers."

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

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