Apocalypse takes us far beyond the usual boundaries of language and custom. If you've ever experienced the strangeness of being a healthy person in an Intensive Care Unit, or a hospice or nursing home, then you have experienced apocalypse in this sense. The world turned inside out, revealed as radically different from what we thought we knew, all the things we value so highly — productivity, control of mind and body, the illusion of personal autonomy — suddenly swept away. And our response to this revelation — whether it depresses us and makes us want to run, or whether we can discern hope, and love, and grace in this strange, new place — is a measure of our true condition. It reveals us to ourselves.
— Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk