Radioactive Clouds, Radioactive Rainbows

"Did you feel that rumble, did you hear that sound?
Well, it wasn't no Earthquake, but it shook the ground...." -Gil Scott Heron

Above all, if we are to be effective parents, we must lead by example.

The intensity of the events that are unfolding and emanating from Japan is massive.  On many levels, life on Earth will never be the same.  Details are emerging and transforming every second.  A clear image of what precisely is happening may never emerge.  It wasn't until years later that the public learned that the 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear disaster had blanketed Europe in a radioactive cloud.  Radioactive clouds are after all, invisible.

Scientists tell us that the 9.0 earthquake affected the earth's rotation so that we are spinning faster now by  a few micro-seconds.  Anyone who has been paying attention, however, is aware that time is accelerating a lot faster than that and has been from before the quake hit.  2011 has been and will continue to be, all about momentum.   We have already experienced escalating solar winds unleashed by strong solar flare activity, increased volcanic eruptions (including one in Japan during the ongoing quakes and aftershocks they are experiencing), economic upheavals and political revolutions.   Everything is connected and the message is the same everywhere: Transformation.

I remember, many years ago, a friend made a simple observation about how much trust we take for granted during the simple act of driving.  We just assume, he said, that the cars speeding along in the opposite direction are going to stay on their side of the double yellow line.  Anyone of them could take our life away in a micro-second with a simple quick shift of direction.

In the same way, we take an awful lot for granted in trusting in our living spaceship Earth.  From water, atmosphere, gravity and electro-magnetic fields to 24 hour rotation, seasonal tilts and a harmonious, unerring dance with the Sun and Moon revolutions, we trust and assume that everything will stay on course and inside the lines.

Ongoing revelations from the Japanese epicenter are warning us, in no uncertain terms, that we are taking our living spaceship, our source of abundance and sustenance for granted and there are consequences when trust slips into negligence and taking for granted turns into taking advantage of.  This is not a new message, it is a message that has been repeated almost to the point of redundancy in recent decades, but it has never been delivered with such brutal and undeniable force.

Here for all to see is what happens when we underestimate the power of the Earth and simultaneously overestimate the reach of Man.

It's time to take care of our ship.  It's time to stop taking our Mother for granted.

This is no longer an issue that can be divided down party lines or conservative versus liberal viewpoints.  It is not something that needs to be debated between industries and activists.  Actions requiring great courage are upon us.  Every decision, in every arena, must be contemplated in terms of promoting a sustainable, harmonious relationship with our living home. We can not go to sleep and expect to wake-up back wherever we thought normal existed.  We definitely can not allow greed to continue to be the fuel of economies and political systems.  We must rise-up, collectively with strength, courage and compassion.  We must rise-up and act in every direction, in every relationship, with every breath, with integrity and constant vigilance and respect for this delicate planet.

Great healing is needed on every level right now.  With the momentum building and the process of massive change and transformation already upon us, it is essential that we connect with our deepest healing powers and inform this transformational process with those healing energies.  Compassion is the source, courage is the fuel, to heal must be our intention.

The radioactive clouds are upon us, there is nothing for it.  They are here.  The years I spent living in the land of endless rainbows, Hawaii, taught me some big lessons.  One of them was that  gray clouds, often have more than a silver lining, many have rainbows smack in the middle of them.

That holds true for radioactive clouds as well.  Even in the midst of overwhelming tragedy, rainbow bridges exist for us to transcend the disaster and destruction.  Those bridges can lead to a realization of our collective highest potential.  The massive change we are in the midst of can become a transformation of heroic proportions.  To embark upon the rainbow bridge is to give birth to the hero within.

What is crucial is that we understand those bridges require inner and outer work to cross.  We must have the courage to first of all look inward, to bravely question our intentions and beliefs, so that we can truly become effective healers in all our actions. Only then will we have the power and magic to unite and collectively transform those who doggedly refuse to let go of their greed-motivated exploitative relationships with our fragile eco-system.  Make no mistake about this, the crossing of a rainbow bridge often requires great struggle and the willingness to fight. The yellow brick road led to OZ, but not before struggles were fought.

Great places to begin:  In the mirror, with our children, helping those directly effected by the collected disasters, helping to clean-up the environmental damage and putting an end to nuclear power.

"There's only one way to keep them safe,
There's only one way to keep them from melting down,
Shut them down, shut them down"

The Power of Dreaming in the Light

Today's blog I am offering as a guest writer for the inspiring "Intentional Conscious Parenting"  blog on Blog frog, which is so wonderfully run by Carol and Stacy. They are both a great source of wisdom and a great networking hub for conscious parents. 

The idea of being a guest blogger ignited my thinking around the idea of perspective and how important diverse and expansive perspective are to both growing children and growing parents.

Having lived my entire childhood, my youth, and most of my adult life in America, I feel a strong connection to all things American.  For better or worse. everything from baseball and beer commercials, two-party politics and ex-Monsanto executives serving as Supreme Court Justices to Native American "reservations' and ancient Redwoods, Nat King Cole and Nirvana, my psyche is saturated in Americanisms.

More recently, the smoothie of my consciousness has been enriched by some new perspectives.   My son Phoenix and I have lived the last five years on an agricultural Greek Island.   Here in the land of my ancestors, famous for their strides in the Maths, Sciences, Philosophy and the Arts, and on this particular island healing and medical insights, our perspective has expanded. The shift of perspective that a connection to my roots and a view of the USA from the outside has offered has been enlightening and instructional on many levels.

As a suburban teenager growing up in a typical white-picket fence, two-car garage community, mowing and watering the lawn in the spring and summer and raking and bagging the leaves to be discarded with the trash in the fall, were not only part of my weekly chores, but became a way of earning money, as I went to work for a friend's lawn care business.  In those days the thought that row after row of manicured grass lawns just might represent an enormous waste of resources, was not yet even in the germination stage of my conscious thinking.


This photo, is not me as a suburban American teenager, but my son Phoenix before a traditional Greek dance performance.....

Here on the Island of Kos, in the Aegean Sea, the only grass fields are the ones cultivated for playing football(or soccer as it is known to Americans).  The typical home here is surrounded by olive, orange, lemon and pomegranate trees and likely has grape vines somewhere on the porch or terrace.  Once spring comes, whatever front or back yards locals have, no matter how small or big, are turned into farming space.  With the first day of Spring a week away, I have spent the last week starting seven different kinds of tomatoes, cucumbers, red peppers, some rare green beans passed on from the Cherokee (pre-America) nation,  lots of watermelons and canteloupes.    Greens and herbs I will sow directly into the Earth in the next couple of weeks.

My personal journey from a lawn mower pushing teen to a farming father, has been a journey of perspective that has been informed by location, culture and an expanding awareness of the delicate balance between humans and the living Earth.  The "typical" American teen (if such a being exists), including those living in the concrete jungles of American cities, is much more environmentally aware than I was some thirty years ago, but the idea that every American grass lawn could actually be a productive food-producing farm is as far from a reality as it was then.

Of course it doesn't take leaving America to come to an agricultural perspective of the Earth.  My own perspective widened drastically when I moved from the sprawling brown clouded-air of Los Angeles to the fertile rain forests of Hawaii's Big Island.  There are certainly many environmentally conscious Americans pioneering perma-culture techniques and sustainable relationships with the Earth, but by and large they are the exception. not the rule in a culture that has morphed out of an American dream built on a post-industrial vision of transcending the toil of the land for the automated comforts of the technological age.

This lack of cultural perspective is a significant obstacle for the caring, environmentally conscious youth who somehow has been able to avoid being absorbed into the obsessive computer, mobile phone mentality of their peers.  Their culture is an obstacle because they have no real models of action and for the most part have to be self-motivated on their quest to re-connect with the earth and establish a harmonic relationship.

Here, for example, the rites of spring planting and sharing of local water sources have been taking place for more than two thousand years.  And significantly, two thousand years ago, this was not some pre-historic shadow of current practices, but a thriving organized, democratic community with theaters, medical schools and at some point aqueducts to transport the water.   In fact, this island was much more self-sustaining then, with a more diversified economy and without a reliance on the resource exploiting tourist industry.  But that is another story, the point here is that, the cultivation of the Earth, the use of resources and the production of food are all an intricate part of the cultural perspective that serves as a foundation for the youth in this community.

It is not born into the psyche of a generation who are rebelling against their elder's wastefulness in an effort to somehow reverse the massive damage unleashed by a culture that has come to view  magical, fertile Mother Earth as an ornamental art piece which we can manipulate to accent the view from our computer desks.

In the same way that art for arts sake, is no longer a responsible expression of a conscious artist, a lawn for aesthetic purposes is no longer a responsible use of resources or energies.  This example is, of course,  just one of a multitude that we, my son Phoenix and I, have learned as our perspective has broadened by moving from city to islands, from state to state and from country to country.  Awareness and perspective are inseparably linked together in all things.

My advice:  Avoid stagnation in all things, stay vigil in your quest to expose your children to diverse and varying perspectives and thus expand their awareness.  Whether this entails moving, traveling or exploring, have the courage to open doors and seize opportunities wherever they may be and to conquer the illusion that financial constraints may limit you.  And turn that lawn into a farm!


I will continue to riff on this theme of expansive perspective and share whatever insight I may have gathered along our path of expanding perspective on my Conscious Parenting/Nurturing Rainbow Warrior blog.  I also look forward to doing a live chat on Carol and Stacy's blog on Thursday April 21st. 9PM Eastern and to hearing your perspective!