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Then there
are those mounting conflagrations that are not as easy to attribute
to a single act or oversight. Relief agencies around the world report
they've never been spread so thin, attempting to alleviate one humanitarian
disaster after another. The Antarctic ice shelf is breaking up, hurricanes
are on the increase, and a season of famine in Africa is all too often
followed by another.
As I write this the American West is in the fifth year of record drought,
a chronic condition only slightly alleviated by the Winter's gracious
rains. We've been beset by ever larger forest fires, and deadly
bark beetles have infested many of the remaining stands. The famous
Rio Grande is running at a fraction of its normal volume, while the
Southeast has nearly been washed away by record breaking floods.
It's as if Earth and Spirit were jumping up and down, getting ever
louder and more shrill in the effort to grab our attention. And indeed,
they are! The rustling leaves of the trees beckon us to notice their
beauty and grace, before the Autumn reckoning when each tumbles from
its silvan place. Similarly, tragedies call on us to wake up and personally
tend to their needs, roots and causes before it's too late.
There are potential consequences should our kind not heed the implorings
of the existing shamans and elders, as well as the dire portents of
our communicative world. They are reflected in the oft foretold fall
of Babylon, in the prayers of the Tibetans and the prophecies of the
Hopi. In the nuclear storms of the dark gods Teacatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli,
the promise of Quetzalcoatl and the Viking legend of Ragnarok: human
kind – systematically disenfranchised from sacred self, Earth and
Spirit – could pay an unnecessarily tragic price.
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Sacred
Earth