Crown Him the Lord of peace,
Whose power a scepter sways . . .
[Hymn: “Crown Him with Many Crowns”]
Seeing Awakening at the front end of change sounds too much like wishful thinking, like waking up each day to look at your houseplant and saying, “Grow, grow!”
Or it is like a surfer watching for the best wave possible. As much as the surfer would like to see the wave, mount the wave, and let it carry the rider to shore, there are too many waves that either dissolve in the early stage or pick the surfer up and throw the surfer off the board, as if to say, “You thought you could ride me, but I am greater than you.” (This metaphor breaks down when the incredible ones master such waves).
Or it is like a child in the back seat of a car complaining, “Are we there yet?”
Awakening is not in the anticipation, but in the reflection, the remembrance of events, thinking, How did that happen? It was amazing!. It is Jesus saying, “You will not understand now, but later you will understand.” It is time of renewal that we remember.
One prophecy I affirm from Diana Butler Bass’s Christianity After Religion is that the next Awakening will be a World Awakening. I think she has this idea from William McLoughlin. We now have the technology and urgency to create a world community, a struggle in which we may encourage each other from thousands of miles away.
If we are to have a World Awakening it must come from universal motives, not sectarian ones. I can think of two such motives:
- Anxiety about climate change
- Questions about gender, especially for women and people with non-binary identity.
Every human being is affected by these issues, and so we are united “…from pole to pole, that wars may cease, And all be prayer and praise. . .” (“Crown Him with Many Crowns”). This would be cause for a Fourth Awakening, where all are included, all share in hope and concern. And the cursed social media (or some universal medium) would have to find a place where all those who sincerely grapple with these fears and hopes can share them and messages of the Spirit.
That place is not obvious at this first quarter century of the Twenty-first, so it is too early to declare a Fourth Awakening. We will have to look backwards when the Awakening is finally visible, because we will have already lived much of it.
Patience and humility is what we need to get there. Our prophecy can be a kind of impatience. It is a desire to get ahead of the Great Change. You don’t get ahead of God, but you can recognize what God has done and say,”Incredible. Is that what we had hoped for? Was that the Awakening we expected?”
. . . His reign shall know no end,
And round His pierced feet
Fair flowers of paradise now extend
Their fragrance ever sweet.
“Crown Him With Many Crowns”