May 19

May 21: The Rapture Meets My 40th Birthday

As lead-ups to fortieth birthdays go, I recommend steering clear of subway preachers who forecast the Rapture for the very day you’re most dreading. For 18 months now, End-Timers have been gathering daily, at the top of the stairway to the train I take home from work, to press “Judgment Day” tracts on unsuspecting commuters. I’m sure someone else, someone who lacked my fundamentalist baggage, would’ve laughed at the coincidence and shaken it off, but to me it felt personal when the men turned up there, with their pamphlets and placards and dire predictions, as though the God I grew up fearing and eventually turned my back on had orchestrated some final absurd cosmic joke. Of all the dates in all the centuries over more than two millennia, why May 21, 2011?

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39 Notes

  1. katherinelanpher reblogged this from wnyc and added:
    She did answer, right? RIGHT?
  2. maitresse reblogged this from fernham and added:
    Happy birthday Maud!
  3. fernham reblogged this from wnyc
  4. wnyc reblogged this from maudnewton and added:
    Happy birthday, Maud! Maud? Maud, are you still there? -L.A.
  5. marcoromano reblogged this from maudnewton
  6. maudnewton posted this

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