“Things fall apart.”

I may be on the edge of copyright law, but I could not resist this recent cartoon in The New Yorker Magazine! These lines (save but the last three words above) I have used many times, over my 40 years of ministry. They come from W.B Yeats’ poem written in 1919 in the aftermath of WWI. The poem is titled The Second Coming. It is fairly obvious that Yeats’ words strike a chord with the cartoonist. Certainly we are experiencing here in the USA troublesome times and sadly we are not alone as a country, as these troublesome times can be found elsewhere. The first stanza describes a world of chaos and confusion in the months following WWI. Since the appearance of these lines we have for the past 100 years had too many occasions to ponder the same thought, civilisation is not getting better but worse. We see it everywhere “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” The second stanza offers limited, if any, hope! The speaker feels as if “some revelation is at hand.” The Second Coming must be approaching, he thinks. Then he has a vision, “a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi.” The Latin words spiritus mundi literally mean “spirit of the world,” and they refer to the collective consciousness or spirit of all humankind. But this Spiritus Mundi is not spawning something good and beautiful. Rather, the speaker sees a horrible monster crouching and crawling across the desert. It represents the antichrist.

Notice what the speaker is implying here. The antichrist will come out of the collective spirit of humanity. People have become so corrupt that they as a group will spawn this monstrous creature, this nightmare, that will actually try to present itself to the world as Christ. The Spiritus Mundi has lost its way, its focus. It no longer follows the Spirit of God. Rather, it has given in to evil, perhaps even become evil itself, so much so that out of it will arrive the “rough beast” that will announce the imminent end of the world. Yet there must be hope and we must not give in or give up. We turn to the God of Hope and trustingly find reason to work harder, so that life and our world can improve for all.

The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? W. B. Yeats

Prayer:
You are the voice we can scarcely hear
because you speak to us about dying and suffering,
and we are impacted by so many voices
that have to do with power
and competence
and success.
We do know that you are the voice that gives life,
that you are the voice that opens futures to people who are hopeless.
We are a part of a hopeless people,
because the other voices eat at our hearts,
and we are immobilized
and we become deaf.
So we pray for new ears.
We pray that your voice may be more audible to us,
that we may be able to sort out the death-giving
from the life-giving voices among us.
We pray in the name of Jesus,
through whom you have spoken
in such inscrutable ways. Amen
from Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: 2003 Fortress Press
by Walter Brueggermann 1933- June 5th 2025