One Disaster After Another...What is Gaia Saying to Us?

For the past several months I have watched as one disaster followed another and another across the face of our world. The news each day brings us updates on all the horrendous displacement of human lives over the past eight months, and it still keeps on...now there is the Earthquake in Asia, and flooding in the heart of New England in the US. I wonder as I watch these events unfold how the humanity involved must feel, to be one day going about your normal every day life and the next day being told to evacuate your city, not just a section of it but the entire city; to sit in your attic clutching your pet close and watch as a wall of water descends on you in a rush...to return to the place where you last saw your child that morning, clutching her book bag and lunch bravely running off to meet her friends never guessing that you might never see her again, and then to stand on the same spot and see the piles of rubble that were her school...it must ripe the heart from a parent to witness such a loss...it ripes my heart as a mother just to think of it sitting here in the safety of my home on the mountain of Tzfat in far off Israel.
So many homeless in the world tonight, not by their own doing but by the actions of nature, of Gaia . this earth of ours,the small blue planet that looks so serene when viewed from space.
Serene...a word that makes us vision pastoral scenes of peace and beauty...not many of those crossing the net pages we visit to get our news...in fact I haven't seen a peaceful scene on the news net now for months. Just the faces of those stricken and not knowing what it is that they may have done to deserve such a tragedy in their lives, the faces of weary reporters who stay on in the devestaed areas and try to feed us whatever bit of news they think we can take today...once in ten or so times there is a story of hope, or of someone being rescued or a pup finding it's owner, or a family being reunited...but underneath it all runs this huge river of human suffering and tragedy for which there seems to be no salve!
It crosses my mind everyday, probably a hundred times or so that if all of us who are not suffering could give just some little part of ourselves to those that are, perhaps we could overcome whatever the imbalance in the world is that is the cause of all of this pain...and I read that in many ways that is happening.
Then I read that the aide agencies are overwhelmed...how could they not be, 22,000 still in shelters from Katrina, 225,000 in temporary homes provided by the government of the United States, thousands in Guatemala that need a place to stay, and now hundreds of thousands more in Asia who have no place to lay their heads at night...it is overwhelming just to read it, so much so that most people I am sure have turned it off, tuned it out and try to go on their way in an ordinary manner not to think about it.
All of this for me, a Jew, the daughter of a survivor, reminds me that we must not turn it off, we must not for a moment forget that there are so many suffering so horrendously in the world...not because of who they are, or where they are, or what they believe or the color of their skin, no they are suffering because we have so upset the balance of the earth, of Gaia, Mother Nature that now she is ill...
Some may say it's the "End Time", others that it surely means "Messiah" is coming, some actually have the audacity to blame the poor people of the countries involved and declare that it is God's rath being poured out on them....
Those of us who are awake spiritually have known for a long time that man could not go on mistreating this living earth of ours forever without some horrendous changes taking place, we knew in the sixties when we first discovered the Green House Effect, we knew when the Nuclear proliferation wouldn't stop, we knew when we kept using the fossil fuels that wreck the air...we knew, but we did nothing...
Doesn't that sound familiar....they came for my neighbor but I did nothing, because I wasn't a Jew, they came for the priest and the nuns but I did nothing because I wasn't a Catholic, they came for....but you remember this story, Right?
Now we must DO SOMETHING, WE MUST TRY TO RESTORE THE PLANET TO HEALTH, we must try to learn to live together in PEACE, we must try to take no more than we need and to share when we have the chance, we must not continue to DO NOTHING!
Life as we know it has changed radically, we must not stand idilly by and do nothing thinking it has nothing to do with us...we must become proactive, we must begin today in our own little corners of this world to do better. If that means, we clean a dirty alley, or we suffle through our clothes and send away things to others, if it means we stop long enough to look in the eyes of the beggar on the street before we give him something...whatever it means we must do it! Our lives and the life of the planet on which we all live depend on US!

This past few days as my husband and I have gleaned from the computer the news of the horrendous effects of Katrina and subsequent flooding in New Orleans and the other states involved we have felt very helpless, being as we are half way across the world in Tzfat.

This morning I listened intently to President Bush being interviewed by Barbara Walters and as I listened the social worker in me picked up on something tremendously important! President Bush, and no doubt a lot of the other people who are in charge and are expected to react when things like this take place, are in shock! I watched as his face held the same look for over half and hour, I listened as his voice belied what any good social worker would quickly recognize as the tension that comes when abject shock has taken the person into a performance mode that allows them to continue to function when they have seen the unseeable!

Yes, perhaps the help is not quick enough in coming, and yes perhaps the response hasn't been what those in the throws of the destruction think it should be, or what most americans and others outside looking in would expect. However, if we take into consideration that we are seeing a situation which is the absolute worst case scenario, the ultimate destruction of an entire city, in fact not just one but many other smaller cities too, and add to that the fact that the US has never in her history since the Civil War ever had to deal with this many displaced, refugee citizens then we can begin to grasp what has happened to the officials who are in charge of the rescue and recovery mission.

Shock indeed! Shock and Awe at the viciousness with which a super storm can ripe the artery out of the heart of one of America's most loved, historic cities! This sort of shock doesn't just go away either, it can't because those of us who watch on the net, or read the newspapers or watch the television are only seeing small snippets of the total picture, while those whose job it is to bring sense out of this chaos are seeing the whole picture, not just the immediate problems of saving lives and rescuing the stranded or feeding and housing thousands of displaced victims, no but the entirety of the impact of this event...they see the facts that we as simple citizens can not. They know what may lie ahead for the next year or two, and see the greater picture of the impact on the lives of all Americans!

While the horrors and the loss of life, of possessions and of human dignity are extreme, the task of being in charge of trying to eleviate the suffering of thousands of people is also at this time extreme!

For myself the thing that bothers me most is that America can send at a moments notice a huge machine to help rescue some men from a sub that is stuck, or who can mobilize an army to help those victims of the Tsunami can't as quickly find a way to help with the evacuation and the restoration of law and order in one of it's own cities, and even that doesn't bother me as much as the fact that I don't see much of an outcry from the citizens of the great nation of America over the situation.It was in this vain of thinking that I came to the conclusion that the only answer can be the terrible tremedous shock of the whole event!

But I ask where are the common citizens who could voice an opinion, who might get off their couches and roll up their sleeves and offer assistance? Lost! They are Lost in the great sea of apathy that has devored their minds, they have watched so many movies about this sort of thing or played so many games of 'Perfect Storm' that when the real , thing happens they are so desenitized that they simply don't react!

So here is what I see from my perch on the mountain of Tzfat; the powers that be are all in a terrible state of shock, horrified that they are not really as prepared for this as they thought they were, and not functioning as they would if they were outside of the event looking on from the sidelines, and someone had better start to treat some of them, before their blood pressure or their hearts give out!

And the citizens of America had better get up from infront of their televisions sets, their gameboys and their computer simulator games and step up to the front! This isn't a test, it is the REAL THING, a great swatch of the southern United States sets in devisation and the citizens of those places need the help of the rest of the citizens if they are to survive! It is NOT the government alone who must reach out to help, every single american citizen who is able bodied and has the means will need to tighten their own belts and give till it hurts! It is time that Americans took a good long look at the situation Mother Nature has unleashed and then rolls up their sleeves and pitch in to do whatever is needed!

My grandmother of blessed memory used to always tell me,"G-D never gives us more than we can bear!" and then she would smile and say "But of course He expects us to help ourselves and others along so that what we are given becomes a shared load!"