By Rev. Carole Hallundbaek

PRN Host, GODSPEED, Sundays 2:00pm Eastern

My children are young, still in elementary school. The other day, the subject of 2012 came up and my fourth grader said plaintively, “Mommy, I don’t want to die when I’m 11.”  

“Goodness -- of course you won’t,” I reassured her. But her comment took me aback.  

I realized she is growing up with an additional layer of uncertainty in her childhood – on top of all the others in life – and I wondered about the emotional and psychological effect the ‘2012’ concept, fact or fiction, is having on kids.

I discovered mortality when I was 10, and I didn’t want to die either – not even a natural, peaceful death of extreme old age, let alone one by prophetic worldwide catastrophe before I was a teenager. 

Regardless of the prophecies (and the profits Hollywood is making on them), it does bother me that my daughter may have this concern in the back of her young mind over the next two years. She is working hard learning long division, crushing on Justin Bieber, and basically just trying to grow up well. 

I shared with my children the epic story of the Great Panic of 2000. 

Remember Y2K? 

The world was gripped with fear for the last moments of 1999, anticipating that at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, all hell would break loose on earth when clocks ticked forward into 2000. 

It was thought that 2000 was a year computers would not recognize, and so the prophets of doom heralded that computers everywhere would suddenly fail, in cars, satellites, the space shuttle. Planes were going to fall from the sky, we were told. Bank accounts were going to disappear, we were told. Corporations invested millions in creating IT committees devoted to addressing the dreaded Y2K bug. Many people headed for the hills that New Year’s Eve, to escape the threat of the fall-out.

Then the new millennium arrived – quietly, and without a hitch.

The reality of Y2K resembled the infamous moment on television in 1986 when Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s vault before millions of Americans in a completely hyped up prime-time special – and discovered it was empty. Live. 

I’m anticipating similar results in December 2012.

There are many predictions of potentially massive upcoming events, from a giant solar flare to the temporary reversal of the earth's magnetic poles. In addition to the Mayan prophecies of a momentous event taking place in 2012, there is also the venerable medieval soothsayer Nostradamus, who referred to deadly tsunami waves and extreme weather.

My fourth grader and I took a walk around our garden the other day. Normally under a foot of snow in February, it would appear Phil the Groundhog was wrong this year. It is an early spring. There is no snow on the ground. The temperature is in the 40’s. It’s raining. And the lilacs and roses are beginning to bud. 
My daughter asked why the lilacs are budding in February. I said it may be due to global warming. “What does global warming mean?” she asked. I explained that it refers to climate change, including the gradual warming of the earth. She asked, “What happens when the earth warms?” I said, for one, the polar ice caps can melt. “What happens then?” she asked. The oceans may rise, I said. And the weather can become more unpredictable, like this. “Hm,” she said, surveying the garden.

The thing is, there has always been climate change and extreme weather. The earth has always been warming and cooling, with species appearing and disappearing throughout the eons of tectonic shoving and cracking and quaking. Earth is a jarring place, and one very much alive.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t dismiss all the 2012 predictions. We're probably due for a cosmic, life-changing event. But I do denounce all the ‘end of the world’ interpretations of the messages. They simply demonstrate a deplorable lack of imagination. 

Something may happen. Something always does. But it doesn’t mean it is the end of anything, let alone everything. What transpires, in fact, may signify a beginning. 

In the meantime, that’s the message I will give to my children.   
 
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