Tectonic Shifting: A Reflection of Our World Today
Though the theories of plate tectonics now provide us with a modus operandi, they still seem to me to be a periodic phenomenon. Nothing is world-wide, but everything is episodic. In other words, the history of any one part of the earth, like the life of a soldier, consists of long periods of boredom and short periods of terror.
- Derek Ager
There is one word to describe the madness of the world we find ourselves living in at this moment in history: Collision.
This is what living in the chaotic world of post-COVID feels like. Collisions, of various kinds and at various levels, seem to be occuring at an accelerated pace. It looks an awful lot like a collision of kingdoms continually colliding with one another. The kingdom of darkness competes against the Kingdom of Light in a fight for good or evil in the hearts of men and women, both individually and as nation-states. It sure feels at times that the darkness seems to be winning.
Yet, there is nothing new here. Just take the films and movies since the dawn of Hollywood and you’ll see these persistent themes evident in each film you watch. Take Netflix for example. The various tiles of shows and movies vying for your attention all have one thing in common: a hero and villain archetype. It seems so obvious that we almost overlook this profoundly simple fact as we scroll through in selecting and adding to ‘My List.’
By way of analogy, these constant collisions in the unseen world I spoke of earlier (i.e. the heavenly’s) are like the tectonic plates that have shifted over “millions of years”, as I learned in my elective University Geology course. Huge, enormous rock structures collide into one another, as they battle for power and for ultimate control, amongst the earth and her seas. After all, that is the goal. And its effects are felt mightily and intensely.
I get it: I’m an (older) millennial, and unlike the Boomers or The Greatest Generation before them, I haven’t lived through other very real threats and extremely difficult, trying times such as: Two World Wars, The Vietnam War, the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Prior to this pandemic, I have only really lived through the recession of 2008 of the U.S. Housing Crisis and the subsequent foreclosures by banks. But that was America, not Canada, right? And I suppose a few recession cycles from our single greatest industry of Oil and Gas out here in the West. Oh, and 9/11, as brutal as that was, not to underscore this event or any of the others I have listed here (and perhaps forgotten to include as well.)
But this one feels different. It hits closer to home. Yet, its effects are much more elusive, as if I’m trying to collect sand with my hands from the bottom of a lake. In other words, the world and all its current changes are cataclysmic and it feels otherworldly as a result of the unseen shifting of tectonic plates in our world today.
