GAIA - Beautiful Video from 2010

https://youtu.be/nGeXdv-uPaw

GAIA .....Beautiful 2010 Video

https://youtu.be/nGeXdv-uPaw

AN INCONVENIENT SEQUAL with Al Gore - Trailer and Preview

Nothing is more important than this.  Nothing.  Once again, I applaud former Vice President Al Gore, author of EARTH IN BALANCE, and collaborator of the film AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH (2006)    Gore is a true American hero, who has devoted so much of his life to waking people up to climate change and environmental destruction.   Please see the film share the film and don't let it stop there.  Literally, everything depends on it.


https://youtu.be/h1Etl9UjIxI

Before the Flood - Movie by Leonard Dicaprio and National Geographic

This is so important. It says it all, so clearly.

 
https://youtu.be/D9xFFyUOpXo

LITANY FOR THE LOST: the 6th Extinction for the Day of the Dead

              

 

 

 ............The Green Turtle, The Hawksbill Turtle, Kemp’s Ridley Turtle, The Leatherback and Loggerhead Turtles.  Sperm whales, the Bottlenose Dolphin, The Brown Pelican, The Barrier Tern and all migrating Songbirds in the Gulf.   The Pancake Batfish, Bluefin Tuna. Piping Plover, Gannets.  The Polar Bear. The Trumpeter Swan, West Indian Manatees, the White Rhinoceros,the Whooping Crane , Caspian Tigers,   The pygmy owl, the Sonora tiger salamander, the American jaguar, the African gorilla, the African rhino, the Mexican grey wolf,the Bengal tiger the White tip Shark the Yangtze river dolphin, the western black rhino, the Pyrenees ibex, the red colobus monkey, Egyptian Barbary sheep the Spanish wolf, the English wolf, the Mexican grey wolf.  The black footed ferret, Moorean tree snail, the little bush moa, the new Zealand coastal moa. Central California steelhead salmon, the Passenger Pigeon, Stellars sea cow , Bachman’s warbler, and the The Ocelot, the Indiana bat, the San Clemente sage sparrow, the Western Snowy Plover, the Short Tailed Albatross, Yellow Billed Cuckoos, San Diego Mesa Mint, Blunt Nosed Leopard Lizards, San Francisco Garter Snakes, Santa Cruz island mallow bushes, the island rush rose, Irish hill buckwheat plants. Old growth coastal redwoods. The Palos Verdes blue butterfly.......................the new Zealand black fronted parakeet, the Jamaican green and yellow macaw, the Jamaican red macaw, the grey parrot, the Solomon island crowned pigeon,the Hawaiian thrush, the Norfolk Island ground dove, the elephant bird, and the great Moa.  The African Elephant, the African Wild Ass,  the Asian Elephant,  the Asian Lion, Atlantic Salmon, Black Lemurs, Black-footed Ferrets, Blue Whales, Bowhead Whales, Cheetahs, wild Chimpanzees; the Dodo.  Eastern cougars, and the Mexican Grey Wolf.  The Eskimo Curlew, the Fin Whale,  Flightless Cormorants, the Giant Anteater, the Giant Armadillo, Greater Prairie Chickens, and the Spotted Owl.  The Indian Rhinoceros, the Japanese Crested Ibis, Eastern Lady Slipper, the lesser koa finch, the Javanese lapwing, the slender billed grackle,the St. Helena petrel, Bruno mountain Manzanita, the desert pupfish, the hawksbill sea turtle, the Wyoming Toad,

And many more  RELATIONS.

The True Cost - a very Important Movie

I will never again buy new clothing, not unless I know where it was made (and that must be local, or guaranteed fair trade by an ethical producer) and what it was made from as well.  Never.

This is a film recently released that's so well done, and so moving, I believe everyone should see it.  It is about the incredible wake of destruction in today's "fast fashion" - to the virtually enslaved workers who make those endlessly disposible, and ever "cheaper" clothes, the horrific waste and decimation of the environment (they present good figures that the clothing industry is second only to the oil industry in environmental impact), and the decimation of our own Western economies, as everyone becomes poorer as a small corporate elite gleans unheard of profits, and yet is fed the illusion that because we can "afford" cheap clothing, we are not.

If we cannot find ways to understand, in every way possible, that we are all connected to each other, that the clothing we wear, the air we breath, the food we eat is all part of the the common good....if we cannot arrive at a true vision and theology of interdependency, truly we are doomed.

My great appreciation for this important, eloquent, disturbing documentary.

http://truecostmovie.com/

https://youtu.be/OaGp5_Sfbss



...............................................................................

*** Below, just because I remembered, I share some photos of garments I saw at the Renaissance Faire last year, all "upcycled" from old sweaters or socks.  Now that is not only creative reuse, but sheer art.

Mother Nature Speaking - Stunning Short Films

I love this series of short films produced by some of Hollywood's most well loved actors - they lend voice to Gaia, to the Forces of Nature.  Truly love them, and urge anyone who hasn't seen them to see them, and share them.  What Gaia has to say is...........very important.

https://youtu.be/WmVLcj-XKnM



https://youtu.be/rM6txLtoaoc



https://youtu.be/jBqMJzv4Cs8

Margo Adler: "Vampires are Us"

I was greatly saddened this summer to learn of the death of Margo Adler, a long time spokeswoman for the Pagan movement, Priestess and well known NPR correspondant.  Her book DRAWING DOWN THE MOON has been so important for helping to understand the growth of the Pagan movement. 

Last summer it was my pleasure to have breakfast with Margo at the Sirius Rising Festival in New York, to hear her speak to those gathered about her new book Vampires Are Us: Understanding Our Love Affair with the Immortal Dark Side (Weiser Books), and her questions about why Vampires are so important in contemporary storytelling, why people are so fascinated with the Vampire, and how vampires have changed from their earlier origins.  The reluctant vampires of Angel and Twilight are not the same as the monsters of  Bela Lugosi's time.

I pondered on this blog the work of  Joe Slate and his  research on  Psychic Vampires and Judith Orloff's comments on Energy Theft , but Margo Adler takes the conversation about Vampires into a whole new place.   

On a personal note, I wish Margo was still with us for many reasons,  and I imagine she would have something to say about the disturbing rise of movies and books about Zombies now. I'll leave that one alone for now, although I sometimes have my concerns...............the walking dead?  Oh............

"As Adler, a longtime NPR correspondent and question asker, sat vigil at her dying husband's bedside, she found herself newly drawn to vampire novels and their explorations of mortality. Over the next four years--by now she has read more than 270 vampire novels, from teen to adult, from gothic to modern, from detective to comic--she began to see just how each era creates the vampires it needs. She explores the issues of power, politics, morality, identity, and even the fate of the planet that show up in vampire novels today. Perhaps, as Adler suggests, our blood is oil, perhaps our prey is the planet. Perhaps vampires are us. "

Directed by Andrew Bennett
Produced by Jay Schweid
an Ephelants Production

http://youtu.be/1BHYg6Ksf0w

The Years of Living Dangerously - Important New Show on Climate Change

 

A friend asked where she could view this, so I'm posting this for her any any others that may want to know.

http://youtu.be/brvhCnYvxQQ

http://yearsoflivingdangerously.com/


published on Apr 6, 2014

Hollywood celebrities and respected journalists span the globe to explore the issues of climate change and cover intimate stories of human triumph and tragedy. Watch new episodes Sundays at 10PM ET/PT, only on SHOWTIME.

Chemtrails, Geo-Engineering - an Important New Film

Chem Trails over Yosemite National Park

"Drought is on the increase, and any kind of loss due to that is going to double.  Then you put yourself up as the solution so when all of this weather comes and and wipes you out,  well,  we've got the solution for you, here's this drought tolerant corn.  Oh, by the way, you've got to sign this 40 page agreement so when you go ahead and plant these seeds you now belong to Monsanto.......They look at severe conditions as an opportunity.  They are disaster capitalists."

 Although I've many times seen the weird grids of "chem trails" in the skies of Arizona, I never really took them seriously, feeling the issue was some kind of conspiracy theory fantasy, and the grids were undoubtedly just air force exercises.  We all know about climate change - but shadowy forces  consciously trying to control the weather?  Impossible.  After seeing this intelligent, award-winning film, I now view them with horror.  Watch the film, and learn about the chemicals in our rain, the alarming increase in allergies, asthma, and other diseases associated with these chemicals, about HAARP, and the hand of corporate entities like Monsanto as well as the military. 

The Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter, were the great film epics of the past decade.  I watch films with a mythologist's eye, wondering what kind of shadow is being shown within the collective unconscious.  As Joseph Campbell pointed out in his famous "Power of Myth" interviews with Bill Moyers, the  "Star wars" trilogy films  (and decades before that, with films like  "Forbidden Planet" and "On The Beach") reflected humanity's increasing fear of the two-edged sword that is technology.  To be more specific, technology used for war and control, and the banality of greed.

What was the meaning of the great struggle against Sauron, and Voldemort, villainous forces whose lust for absolute power meant the destruction of the world?  These monsters are the monsters that exist in the psyche of  unevolved humanity.    Like the black magicians of the Atlantis myths, these people are "playing God" indeed, with an arrogance that is nothing new, but armed with a global technology that is truly disastrous.  

"If you can create weather modulation, you create crisis, and if you have the seed supply.........you control everything."......."(Geo- Engineering) can be used to control the weather, and thus corporatize every natural system on the planet.  This would enable certain individuals to consolidate an enormous amount of monetary and political power into the hands of the few at the expense of every living thing on the planet."

 Here's the trailer, and below it is the full length movie.  
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3__ssxTvNc#t=94



 

http://www.whyintheworldaretheyspraying.com/

"People around the world are noticing that our planet's weather is dramatically changing. They are also beginning to notice the long lingering trails left behind airplanes that have lead millions to accept the reality of chemtrail/geoengineering programs. Could there be a connection between the trails and our severe weather? While there are many agendas associated with these damaging programs, evidence is now abundant which proves that geoengineering can be used to control weather. In this documentary you will learn how the aerosols being sprayed into our sky are used in conjunction with other technologies to control our weather. While geoengineers maintain that their models are only for the mitigation of global warming, it is now clear that they can be used as a way to consolidate an enormous amount of both monetary and political power into the hands of a few by the leverage that weather control gives certain corporations over the Earth's natural systems."

 Directed/Produced by Michael J. Murphy and Produced/Edited by Barry Kolsky.. Written by Michael J. Murphy and Barry Kolsky. 

In Partnership With Mother Earth

Not too long ago I posted an article by Robert Koehler titled "Calling All Pagans - Your Mother Earth Needs You" and wrote to the author in appreciation for his article.  I was surprised when he wrote back, and we had an exchange of ideas, and very pleased when he sent me a followup article in which he quoted me from our email conversation.  So it's my pleasure to share his second article here.

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH MOTHER EARTH

By Robert C. Koehler
 4/17/14

OK, mankind, it’s time to grow up, and I see a good way to start: Change the wording of Genesis 1:26. Change one word. 

Last week, I quoted that Bible verse in a column about the increasing velocity of climate change:   “And God said . . . let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,” etc.  

Dominion! * Nature belongs to us, to suck dry and toss away. And thus we moved out of the circle of life and became its conquerors, an attitude at the core of the Agricultural Revolution and the rise of civilization. The momentum of this attitude is still driving us. We don’t know how to stop, even though most people now grasp that we’re wrecking the environmental commons that sustains life.

Addressing the verse and the idea of “dominion,” Phil Miller, a minister, wrote: “Some of us understand that word to mean ‘stewardship’ or ‘responsibility.’” And David Cameron wrote: “One has to wonder what would have ensued had the translation said ‘stewardship’ rather than ‘dominion’? Almost incomprehensible that our future and the future of so many and so much may have hinged on that one word.”

If in one of the most defining religious-political texts of the human species we’d been charged with stewardship of the natural world, not some sort of adolescent, consequence-free control over it, what sort of spiritual understanding would have evolved over the millennia? What sort of technology? What would our civilizations look like if we believed in the depths of our beings that they were not distinct from but part of nature? What if, instead of organizing ourselves around the concept that we have enemies to subdue — “survival of the fittest” — we explored the complexity of our connectedness to one another and the whole of creation, even when the connections were barely visible?

What I am coming to learn, as I ask such questions, is that this understanding is already vibrantly present in the collective human consciousness, drowned out as it may be by the special interests that run our world. These interests, which serve war and money, have belittled complex understanding as “paganism” and colonized, enslaved and slaughtered its primary keepers: the tribal and indigenous people of the world.
 

Listen to the words of Rupert Ross, from his remarkable book Returning to the Teachings, as he describes his dawning understanding of the aboriginal culture of northern Ontario: 

 “The word ‘connecting’ leapt at me. It captured not only the dynamics I imagined in that room, but also the key feature of all the traditional teachings I had been exposed to thus far. Until then, I had somehow missed it. It involved a double obligation, requiring first that you learn to see all things as interconnected and second that you dedicate yourself to connecting yourself, in respectful and caring ways, to everything around you, at every instant, in every activity.“. . . (Children) had to learn to see themselves not as separate, individual beings but as active participants in webs of complex interdependencies with the animals, the plants, the earth and the waters.”

Indeed, Ross and many others have pointed out that indigenous science has always known what Western science has only recently relearned: that the universe is energy and dynamic flux, that there’s no such thing as objectivity and separation. 

“Like Western science, indigenous science relies upon direct observation for forecasting and generating predictions,” according to the Worldwide Indigenous Science Network. “. . . Unlike Western science, the data from indigenous science are not used to control the forces of nature; instead, tell us the ways and the means of accommodating nature.”   Among other critical distinctions, according to the website: “All of nature is considered to be intelligent and alive, thus an active research partner.”

 I note these ideas not to throw rocks around in some “debate” about who’s right, but to open up the national and global conversation about who we are. We can let these ideas sit in our imaginations. What might stewardship of nature mean if we regarded the relationship as a partnership? What might a celebration of Earth Day (April 22) look like?

“We need to re-myth culture, to re-sanctify nature before it’s too late,” Lauren Raine (“a longtime advocate and practitioner of neo-pagan theology and resident artist for Cherry Hill Seminary, “the only accredited Pagan seminary in the U.S”) wrote to me last week.“Earth-based spirituality is to be found in all cultures, including many rich traditions from Europe and Great Britain. The evolution of our strange, life-denying religious backdrop has much to do with the evolution of patriarchal culture and values. We need to get rid of the war gods, and return . . . to honoring the Mother.”

We also need to put our lives on the line, or at least honor those who do. One of the many responses I got to last week’s column was from environmental activist Jessica Clark, who faces jail time for sitting in a tree last fall. 

In September, she and other members of the Michiana Coalition Against Tar Sands, or MICATS, temporarily blocked Enbridge Inc.’s tar sands pipeline expansion through Michigan. This was an expansion of the same pipeline that ruptured in 2010, badly polluting the Kalamazoo River; it was the largest and costliest inland oil spill in history. 

One night the protesters climbed trees at the construction site in central Michigan and anchored their platform to the company’s construction equipment. If the ropes had been moved, the protesters’ platform would have tipped, dropping them 50 feet to the ground. That didn’t happen, but they were arrested and convicted of trespassing — for the crime of stewardship. It’s the price of growing up.

 Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press), is still available.

Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at www.commonwonders.com.

*My bold.

Calling All Pagans: Your Mother Earth Needs You

Here's an article, written by someone who is unaware, perhaps, of the decades long work contemporary pagans, Goddess workers, eco-feminists, and other Gaians have been doing.  Huzzah - pass it on.  He addresses what we have been talking about for so many years, the urgent and potent need to re-myth our world, to re-sanctify the Mother. 

 Calling All Pagans: Your Mother Earth Needs You

by Robert C. Koehler

 "Sadly,  we’re far more prepared to go to war than

 we are to make peace with the planet."

Somewhere between these two quotes lies the future:

“And I would like to emphasize that nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change.”

“The Judeo-Christian worldview is that man is at the center of the universe; nature was therefore created for man. Nature has no intrinsic worth other than man’s appreciation and moral use of it.”

The first quote is from Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, summing up the dire and much-discussed findings of its recent report: Human civilization — its technology, its war games, its helpless short-sightedness and addiction to fossil fuels — is wrecking the environment that sustains all life. Time is running out on our ability to make changes; and the world’s, uh, “leadership” — political, corporate — has shown little will to step beyond more of the same, to figure out how we can reduce carbon emissions and live in eco-harmony, with a sense of responsibility for the future.

"But maybe we can start learning, at long last, that we are not the masters of the universe and that “dominion” and exploitation are immature expressions of power."

The second quote is from radio talk-show host Dennis Prager, writing recently in the National Review Online. He goes on, in his remarkable rant against environmentalism, to point out that “worship of nature was the pagan worldview” and “for the Left, the earth has supplanted patriotism.” Eventually he compares environmentalism to loving wild dogs more than mauled children.

Prager’s diatribe isn’t my normal reading matter and I only bring it up here because I think it has relevance to the leadership void I’ve been pondering. The contemptuous dismissal of nature as lacking intrinsic worth — an unworthy competitor with God for human allegiance — may no longer have mainstream credibility, but, like racism, it’s part of the mindset that has shaped Western civilization.

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

We’re still caught up in the momentum of dominion. Thus: “. . . for all the alarming warnings generated by the scientific community and confirmed by the IPCC’s comprehensive analysis of that science,” according to a recent Common Dreams article, “world governments and the powerful private sector have done next to nothing to meet the challenge now before humanity.”

Indeed, as Elizabeth Kolbert points out in The New Yorker: “Currently, instead of discouraging fossil-fuel use, the U.S. government underwrites it, with tax incentives for producers worth about four billion dollars a year.”  We’ve got, as the IPCC report states, “a 15-year window” to start making serious changes in how we structure our world. Human society will need, the Common Dreams piece says, to “revolutionize the structures of its economies, food systems, and energy grids.”

This is not going to happen — not at current levels of awareness, concern and empowerment. This is the dawning realization I find myself less and less able to live with. Climate change and global weather chaos — droughts and fires, tsunamis and tidal waves, crop failure, undrinkable water, devastating cold, rising oceans, new levels of social turmoil — are the future we are unable to hold off. But maybe we can start learning, at long last, that we are not the masters of the universe and that “dominion” and exploitation are immature expressions of power.

My only hope is that, in so learning — as humanity finds itself increasingly entangled with environmental chaos and recognizes its utter vulnerability to nature — we will begin to transcend our isolated sense of entitlement to do with Planet Earth what we will and revolutionize the way we organize every aspect of our social structure, rethinking ten millennia of dominance-motivated social organization. Nobody, after all, no matter how wealthy and fortified, is immune to the impact of a changing climate.  We’re all in it together. We’re part of nature, not its master. This concept is the missing foundation stone of contemporary civilization.

It was in this state of mind that I read Prager’s essay, wondering if such an awareness change were possible, or whether, as the consequences of unsustainable living intensified, we’d become, instead, increasingly isolated and survivalist in our thinking.
“Worship of nature was the pagan worldview,” he wrote, sounding the note of ultimate contempt for any suggestion that environmental sustainability matters and our way of life needs to change profoundly.

Perhaps the word “pagan” embodies the most deeply embedded prejudice in the Western, civilized mindset — the first and last justification for global dominance. Pagans are the ultimate “other.” We’ve built a moral structure on this prejudice, and as a consequence the U.S. government continues to subsidize rather than tax fossil fuel production. As a consequence, we’re far more prepared to go to war than we are to make peace with the planet.

We have to undo this prejudice before it undoes us.

 Published on Thursday, April 10, 2014 by Common Dreams

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.

Fukushima, and the Pacific Ocean

What happened in Japan in 2011 is a continuing worldwide tragedy, and has been denied by the media.  I return from my trip to these articles forwarded by  Dr. Carol Wolman, a long time nuclear activist  in Northern California. 

Dear Friends,

The bad news continues- see headlines below.   I took part in a conference call with the director of Nuclear Affairs- Tom Cochran at National Resources Defense Fund (NRDC) yesterday.  I was asking him to support a call for making Fukushima declared an international catastrophe.  He declined, saying essentially that the discharge into the ocean will be diluted and won't affect us or the rest of the world- it's a Japanese problem.  I pointed out that the corium has hit the groundwater, so pollution of the ocean will increase- he ignored this.

Please continue circulating this petition  http://www.change.org/petitions/west-coast-senators-investigate-the-ongoing-danger-from-the-fukushima-nuclear-reactors .   We need to break through the denial of how serious this is.

Peace,
Carol Wolman

 please sign the petition to put pressure on our Senators.
http://www.change.org/petitions/west-coast-senators-investigate-the-ongoing-danger-from-the-fukushima-nuclear-reactors

 Here's the news:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/05/fukushima-leak-emergency_n_3707075.html

8-8 http://enenews.com/ktxl-sacramento-now-the-threat-of-radioactive-water-rushing-our-way-traces-of-radiation-found-in-area-fish-not-dangerous-expert-says-video

http://enenews.com/nuclear-official-radioactive-leaks-getting-out-of-control-and-creating-a-state-of-emergency-at-fukushima-emergency-is-accelerating-due-to-faster-than-expected-swelling-underground

8-9 http://enenews.com/top-official-the-current-situation-is-extremely-severe-at-fukushima-plan-to-reduce-contamination-flowing-into-ocean-relies-on-untested-methods-and-technologies-that-have-not-been-develop

8-10  http://enenews.com/tv-very-likely-that-some-of-the-melted-cores-have-moved-into-the-earth-at-fukushima-its-beyond-containment-right-now-video

Our Changing Earth: MIDWAY Project

  

Here is a forthcoming film that is heartbreaking, and important, and well worth supporting.

"The MIDWAY media project is a powerful visual journey into the heart of an astonishingly symbolic environmental tragedy. On one of the remotest islands on our planet, tens of thousands of baby albatrosses lie dead on the ground, their bodies filled with plastic from the Pacific Garbage Patch. Returning to the island over several years, our team is witnessing the cycles of life and death of these birds as a multi-layered metaphor for our times. With photographer Chris Jordan as our guide, we walk through the fire of horror and grief, facing the immensity of this tragedy—and our own complicity—head on. And in this process, we find an unexpected route to a transformational experience of beauty, acceptance, and understanding."

Midway:  a Love Story for Our Time 

from the Heart of the Pacific

A forthcoming film by Chris Jordan

https://www.albatrossthefilm.com/

2012 Reflections: "Stand Still for the Apocalypse"

"Humans must immediately  implement a series of radical measures to halt carbon emissions or prepare for the collapse of entire ecosystems and the displacement, suffering and death of hundreds of millions of the globe's inhabitants, according to a report commissioned by the World Bank. The continued failure to respond aggressively to climate change, the report warns, will mean that the planet will inevitably warm by at least 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, ushering in an apocalypse.

The 84-page document,"Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World  Must Be Avoided," was written for the World Bank by the Potsdam  Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics and  published last week. The picture it paints of a world convulsed by  rising temperatures is a mixture of mass chaos, systems collapse and  medical suffering like that of the worst of the Black Plague, which  in the 14th century killed 30 to 60 percent of Europe's population.  The report came just in time for the 2012  United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Doha, Qatar."

Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist 

 

The U.N. Conference on Climate Change is occurring as I write, and I feel urgently the need to think about the article above from many perspectives.  The Winter Solstice of 2012 is almost upon us, and I've been thinking about what this metaphor actually means.   (And if the world ends  in a little less than a month, I'll learn, if  only briefly, to be more literal and less metaphorical about everything).

But if the world doesn't end with a polar shift, or a vast meteorite,  on the 21st, it does not mean that the prophecy is not true.  Nor does it mean that the metaphor of Dawn and a New Age is not without truth and possibility.  They say that the truth can set us free, and enable us to begin to address the problems, and potentials, of the future. But right now, we're a civilization asleep at the wheel indeed.  Denial is not a strong enough word for the  negligence.  And that Dawn will arise, if it arises, from chaos and a great deal of suffering and loss.

Spider Woman is the creatrix/midwife who, in Hopi prophecy (and the Mayan Calendar and the Hopi Calendar are related) led a small number of people through the kiva (which could be seen as a birth canal) into each of the next worlds.  In some variations of the Pueblo creation myth, the last world ended with a great flood that sank the continents, and Spider Woman taught the few people who emerged into the 4th world (our world) to make boats to survive.**  At all accounts, I believe She has come when She was needed, to teach us the lessons of the great Web of Life, the Unity of all life.  To cast us a shining line.  And now the 4th World is about to end........I do not believe She has abandoned us now. But we must listen and act.

I grew up with the Apocalypse, even as I watched Neil Armstrong go to the moon, and the advent of the Computer Age. I was one of those kids that hid under their desks in the "event of nuclear war", and my father kept a closet full of canned beans and peaches, just in case.  In Berkeley we talked about zero population growth and recycled our paper bags and invented "bulk" foods at the Co-op.  We wanted to save the redwoods, the prairie dogs and spotted owls, to breath clean air.   But no one could have imagined that we could face this.  No one.

The article linked above by Pulitzer prize winning journalist and author Chris Hedges is horrifying.  I think everyone should read it, just as everyone should see "An Inconvenient Truth", which by comparison, is quite polite. I think the time to be polite is over.  If  people have children or grandchildren, and have made that hopeful investment in the future, it's time to think about what they may face.

"A planet wide temperature rise of 4 degrees C—and the report notes that the tepidness of the emission pledges and commitments of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will make such an increase almost inevitable—will cause a precipitous drop in crop yields, along with the loss of many fish species, resulting in widespread hunger and starvation. Hundreds of millions of people will be forced to abandon their homes in coastal areas and on islands that will be submerged as the sea rises. There will be an explosion in diseases such as malaria, cholera and dengue fever. Devastating heat waves and droughts, as well as floods, especially in the tropics, will render parts of the Earth uninhabitable. The rain forest covering the Amazon basin will disappear. Coral reefs will vanish. Numerous animal and plant species, many of which are vital to sustaining human populations, will become extinct. Monstrous storms will eradicate biodiversity, along with whole cities and communities. And as these extreme events begin to occur simultaneously in different regions of the world, the report finds, there will be “unprecedented stresses on human systems.” Global agricultural production will eventually not be able to compensate. Health and emergency systems, as well as institutions designed to maintain social cohesion and law and order, will crumble. The world’s poor, at first, will suffer the most. But we all will succumb in the end to the folly and hubris of the Industrial Age. And yet, we do nothing."

I'm not the first person to say it, but it needs to be said again and again, and be a required class and discussion in every school.  How can we teach the young geometry and literature, and leave them unprepared in every way for the reality of ecological disaster?  It's not a nice theoretical problem for them, it's their future.  Our civilization, which is now global, which affords us such unprecedented wealth, food, longevity, and novelty....is not sustainable.  We cannot evolve to survive the technological age unless we can evolve spiritually to meet the challenge, and we're, according to some, plain out of time. 

A corporatocracy and the bottom line is not a fit, ethical, or visionary leader, and yet, that is what, essentially, we have rendered our power over to.  Our civilization is not sustainable.  Not because of wall street, or outsourcing, or devaluation of the dollar or the euro.  It's not sustainable because the polar ice caps are melting, and the snows of Kilimanjaro are almost gone, and we continue to burn coal.  Because too many life forms that weave the web of ecosystems are rapidly becoming extinct, and the Great Coral Reef is dying, and no one can imagine getting the kids to school without an SUV.  And because the environment wasn't even in the presidential debates.  

How does one, really, come to grips with this?   There are many who are trying, who offer hopeful seeds.  How can we break the "sound of silence", wake each other up and demand justice, not only human justice, but for all living beings, for the great, brilliant, blue planet that is more than our home, but our life and our mother and our own being.  For Gaia.............

**"Taiowa sent Spider Woman to talk to the people who still carried the Creator’s song in their hearts. She taught them how to build large boats out of reeds. This, they did, and when their boats were sealed, the waters began to flood the world. The noise of the rushing waters was incredible.  Large continents sunk and broke apart into small islands. Incredible rains fell. Then it stopped, and there was silence. The reed boats drifted the people ove r t h e s i l e n t waters for a long time.  When their boats finally stopped on a new coastline, the people walked onto the dry lands for the first time."

*** This morning I went to work on a shower I'm tiling in a trailor.  The tiles are in a box on a table outside, and seemingly hovering above the tiles in the box was a seed, the kind that you see drift by in a good breeze.  I was amazed that it stayed right there, until I realized it was suspended by a single transparent spider thread.  What a lovely metaphor........for me, for all.  To be the seeds, suspended and sustained by the Threads of Tse Che Nako.

The New Atlantis: Gaia Casts Her Vote

 On the brink of a presidential election (and the end of the world at the Winter Solstice, according to the 2012 prophecy enthusiasts), as our not-so-visionary leaders argue about economics,  war, whether health care should be only available to the rich and privileged, and other domestic issues, everyone seems  to be ignoring the very large elephant in the middle of the room.

That's right, CLIMATE CHANGE.  An Inconvenient Truth.  What one of the climatologists  in a recent interview with Amy Goodman***  called the "Voldemort of our time".  Only we don't have a Harry Potter, or a Frodo Baggins, to fight the Dark Lord.  We're all in this together, and the "Dark Lord" is the dark side of humanity that denies the almost inconceivable, that sacrifices the future of all children for greed and an insatiable lust for power, that trivializes the tragedy of the 6th Extinction into dancing Polar Bears that sell Coca Cola.  

Earth scientist James Lovelock (Interesting name, if you think about it, considering the situation) originated the now highly accepted premise that the Earth is a complex, interdependent,  self-regulating bio-system, a living being -  "Gaia Theory".   

As New York and the East Coast try to recover from the unprecedented "Frankenstorm" Sandy, it looks like GAIA cast her vote.  PACHAMAMA  made a political comment.

Gaia by Esther Johnson

She reminds us "Hello,  this is another wake-up call. " 

We're not the first unsustainable civilization, as Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond pointed out in his book Collapse, but we are (to the best of our knowledge)  the first global civilization,  the most environmentally lethal, and with the greatest consequences.  Even in the face of massive overpopulation, and some pretty clear evolutionary indicators that women should have equal rights with the other half of the human race, Biblical patriarchs living in the 21st century, but making conclusions from books written sometime around the 2nd century,  continue to insist that they shouldn't even have birth control. And although it's been 6 years former Vice President Al Gore released his definitive movie "An Inconvenient Truth", nothing much has changed.  How about "Fracking", and genetically modifying the food sources ("Frankenfoods")?  "Geoengineering"? HAARP and chem trails? Nuclear waste? Deforestation?.......... 
 

Are we the New Atlantis?

What is the myth?  According to Edger Cayce, Atlantis was a great civilization with wonderful inventions, including flying machines and the ability to move great stones to build their temples and their great pyramids.    But as they grew in power, their magicians became too proud, too arrogant.  Cayce's readings say they had great  crystals (so do we, Silicone, the stuff that makes computers work) that could do miraculous things, but they were so powerful that they could break the very fabric of nature and the veils between the worlds.  Atlanteans became divided, and at the end, warring Atlanteans broke the balance of the world, and the great continent sank below the ocean.  This tale is also one of the sources for Tolkien's "Silmarillion", the mythos from which he created the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.  

 Can we change the story? 

http://youtu.be/SAHqsmHY0cU





***Democracy Now:   http://youtu.be/YPfAvgJLDyA