Having missed the moment, I have been meditating all day about what to write on this momentous date, 12/12/12. It should be something really stupendous, tremendous or at least significant. Just about every metaphysical system ever dreamed up has a special place for the number 12. Twelve months in a year, twelve signs in the zodiac, twelve hours on the clock (unless you are military,) twelve peers on a jury, twelve days of Christmas, and did I mention that 12 is a dozen which is a typical number of donuts, certainly a metaphysical alignment if I ever heard one.
If you read the Bible closely, the number 12 comes up more than two dozen times. In Judaism it is the number of completeness. It appears throughout Scripture: twelve tribes, twelve apostles, twelve miles each way for the new Jerusalem. It is not recorded, but I would wager that the Garden was twelve square something. I have no doubt that God in his wisdom has built meaning into everything he has done; it often escapes us, but it is there whether we recognize it or not.
However, it is the height of hubris to think that a date on the Gregorian calendar would necessarily have universal symbolic meaning. The calendar we use today was not adopted until 1582 A.D. (or CE if you prefer.) While it is true that most of the civilized world has adopted this method of tracking time, it is by no means the oldest. There are several calendars far older. The date today on a Mayan calendar might be 8/11/3114. The Chinese would have us believe it is 10/29/4710. The Jewish date is 9/28/5773, measuring (as they believe) to the time of creation.
My point is that it is just like us egotistical Westerners to think that the entire universe revolves around us and our calendar. This same kind of thinking led dark ages clerics to burn at the stake heretics who suggested that the earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa. Oops! The heretics were right. Barely one generation before our enlightened forefathers settled on a calendar, their grandparents were scoffing at the plans of one Columbus of Genoa who thought he could sail west around the world and reach the east. I admit he miscalculated the distance, but he had the concept right. Thank goodness Ferdinand and Isabella were willing to finance his efforts.
As this momentous day nears its end, I think it is wonderful that thousands of couples were able to book their weddings today; it will be hard for those guys to forget the date of their anniversary (or not.) Hundreds of happy parents are gushing over their newborns who will forever carry 12/12/12 on their birth certificates. In addition, I am certain that many people will have had meaningful things happen today, and they will record 12/12/12 as one of the best or worst days of their lives. Beyond that, I suspect that most people will record absolutely nothing today.
That is a shame. Not only is today the first day of the rest of your life, today is the last day of all the days that have gone before. More importantly, today is the only day you have to live. Instead of looking for significance in astrology, numerology, cosmology or any-ology, you should be looking for the best way to use the moment you are in right now. Maybe it is nine days to the end of the world as Mayan speculators predict (12/21/12.) More important, for more than 150,000 people, today was the end of their world, or I should say their life on earth.
So there it is: it does not matter what today's date is. What matters is what your next address is. Every body ends up in a six foot box in a six foot hole, but every soul lives on through eternity. The most important date in my life was 4/21/63; that's when I sealed the deal on my eternal destiny. Although there is a metaphysical sense in which I have been seated with Jesus in heaven ever since that day, practically speaking, whatever the date on whatever calendar I use I am called to live each day I get on earth as if heaven matters most. I believe it truly does.
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