Why I Still Want To Be Left Behind

Brenda Peterson

Author, 'I Want to Be Left Behind'

Why I Still Want To Be Left Behind

Posted: 05/19/11 12:20 PM ET HUFFINGTON POST

Sunset on the Salish Sea, Seattle, spring, 2011                     photo: B. Peterson

When California preacher, Harold Camping, predicted the world would end this Saturday evening, several of my Rapture-ready friends insisted I finish reading theLeft Behind series and make my preparations.

Camping's ubiquitous billboard messages: "Blow the trumpet, warn the people!" were all over Seattle. People were so giddy with anticipation, it recalled the many loopy, no-exit conversations I've had with my righteous neighbor.

"Why are you so ... well, cheerful, about doomsday?" I always asked him.

He gazed at me with the true alarm of deep pity. "I'm afraid you'll have a rough time of it here during the Tribulations."

"Don't you love any of us you believe will suffer so?" I said.

This gave my neighbor a moment's pause. But then he admitted with some chagrin. "You can't blame us born-agains for at last getting our heavenly rewards. We've waited thousands of years for End Times. We've got holy wars, world financial markets crashing, Israel's military power, Middle East uprisings, and even global warming."

This last sign he pronounced brightly, as if our global climate was gleefully graduating into a hot time in the old world.

It struck me that being "raptured" out of this world trumps the insecurity of living and the surrender of dying or staying on. No bodily indignity. No suffering. One will simply be whisked off with the fellowship of the believers -- the Rapture gang -- to a heavenly reward.

In the twinkling of an eye they say, the righteous will ascend, dropping golden dental work, nightgowns, and perhaps some spouses. Unless you count losing the earth and billions of unfortunate sinners who cling to it, getting raptured is a blast. Who wouldn't want to escape prophesied plagues, floods, and nomadic thug-like legions of the unsaved?

This rather pitiless evacuation plan for only the righteous might seem darkly comic, if not for a Timemagazine poll: 56 percent of Americans "believe the prophecies in the Book of Revelation will come true." Perhaps that explains why the Left Behind books are the biggest selling fictional series in the United States.

Read on at The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brenda-peterson/may-21-rapture_b_863982.html

And enjoy your weekend, especially Sunday's sunshine! And here's one of my favorite quotes: 

"On the last day of the world

I would want to plant a tree."

    ~ W. S. Merwin, "Place"

Here's a photo I took last month of a 500-year-old tree on the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest where I was Writer-in-Residence. And some video of climbing into its massive canopy with children.

massive ancient cedar HJ Andrews Experimental Forest Long-Term Ecological Research site

http://andrewsforest.oregonstate.edu/

Blue River, Oregon. The rapture of the sky and ancient forest

Climbing with brave and monkey-agile 7th graders up this old, generous tree into the canopy, alive with birdsong and a deep, poised silence. Rapture.

www.PacificTreeclimbing.com

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Read on at The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brenda-peterson/may-21-rapture_b_863982.html

Wolves Endangered by Political Predators ~ My Seattle Times op-ed

(original artwork by Gabriel Campanario/The Seattle Times)

Dear Friends,

Here is my new opinion piece for The Seattle Times (4.31.2011) that appears in the Sunday print edition as well as the online edition at this link. Please READ ON AT THE ORIGINAL LINK:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2014913892_guest01peterson.html

Please get involved in protecting endangered species, especially the wolves, by visiting:

Natural Resources Defense Council at : http://wwwnrdc.org

Or Earth Justice and Defenders of Wildlife: http://wwwdefenders.org

And thanks for visiting The Seattle Times and, if you can, making a comment or recommending it to your friends and Facebook pages. The more we howl to Congress about this precedent-setting gutting of the Endangered Species Act, the less this kind of playing poker with other species will be allowed.

The back story on this "wolf rider" attached to the budget bill that passed April 15th, is that Sen. Tester, Montana, sponsored this bill to assure himself re-election in 2012. And the Democrats, desperate to keep Democratic control of the Senate, sacrificed the wolves to keep their margin in the Senate. This is exactly why the Endangered Species has, until now, always insisted on science, not politics, guiding the delisting and listing of species.

And here's another of my favorite wolf photos from the reintroduction of the first packs of wild wolves to Yellowstone in 1995.

(U.S. Fish and Wildlife photo, 1995 First wolf pups born in Yellowstone, 1995)

(photo courtesy of wolf biologist Rick McIntyre, author of THE WAR AGAINST THE WOLF: 
America's Campaign to Exterminate the Wolf  (Voyager Press)

Also, I have written extensively about the original wolf reintroduction in my first memoir, BUILD ME AN ARK: A LIFE WITH ANIMALS, as well as other articles for The Christian Science Monitor, The Huffington Post, and The Seattle Times.

A big howl out to all of the pack who are speaking for the wolves and all other endangered species! Work at the state and federal levels to make your voices heard.