Reverend Billy's Revelations
An Agony Column for the Apocalypse
Reverendo!
Priests and preachers predict the future, heaven and hell and all that - am I right? I know your Earthchxrch must have prophecies, right?
Francisca, Chinatown, New York
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Don’t look at me - the Earth is the prophet. But the reports on our future come in the form of wind speed and waves of heat and lava geysers. This is a howling-wind language that most white westerners haven’t understood for centuries. So let’s start to learn how the Earth speaks to us.
What is the Earth saying with sending in Hurricane Otis and ruining the resort town of Acapulco? Hurricane Otis was like a designer storm, very small - 30 miles wide at most - and with the help of freak jet streams overhead, Otis accelerated from an ordinary 50 mph wind to 200 mph Cat 5 within half a day. Weather prognosticators were caught flat-footed; couldn’t get the Accuweather on the wall because it was already rubble with dead bodies in it.
So what is the statement here as to the future of luxury resorts frequented by hedge fund crypto Burning Man creeps with pixelated startups? Or are you one of those Newtonian people who still believes that Mother Nature has no mind? Are you an old-timer that thinks the natural world is all a mysterious accident?
The Earth is inventing storms faster than the Whitney Museum can hustle new art forms. The Earth is becoming the culture. Human institutions like Chase Bank or the Vatican or Disneyland or the American Medical Association: the corporatized communities are constricting in fear. They are more comfortable bombing human children than walking outdoors and humbly trying to make sense of the riddle of the deadly sky.
Major institutions have completely abandoned us. They are still trying to sell us bargain objects on credit while the roof blows off the house from their toxins. How is it possible to be normal anymore? If you are opening your eyes and want to protect your children then you are listening to the Earth for signals, and all sorts of people across the culture are developing a kind of DIY radicalism. Stop the knee-jerk damning of MAGA people and expand your de-colonizing to include everything. Stop colonizing the ground you are standing on and the air you breathe.
Francisca! The Earth is the prophet. The Earth is our government. The Earth is our culture. The Earth is our religion. The Earth is the university. The Earth is the reality that is ripping Consumerism's virtual reality from our eyes. And all the names and logic that we have for everything is erased by the wind and the water.
Francisca! The Earth wants a word with you! Go outside!
Earthalujah!
Rev
Great post, but, then, I'm always open to anyone who has (re)discovered Our Dear Mother Earth in all of her glory and ability to reset her evolutionary clock. I recommend to anyone who'll listen, a daily perusal of C3S's "Climate Pulse", with its graphic display of atmospheric and sea temps over the past 50 yrs on a searchable day by day, year to year basis. It will terrify the brave and inform the wary. Keep up the great work!
I met Reverend Billy while traveling with the cross-country Great March for Climate Action and have followed his fun, Earth-a-lul-yeah antics ever since. Street theater is so powerful and engaging. Everybody wants in on the action!