The Awakening of America

Reflections on the Heart of the Hurricane
a Personal Review
by
Mary Ceallaigh
Austin, Texas
9-10-05

Introduction Whatever past heartache and heartbreak I have lived through and
witnessed in my human journey thus far, has been fully eclipsed by the Reuters
reports et. al. of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe stories since it happened. In this
quickening of the world heart's laboring ache on a mighty scale, I've reminded myself
to trust that the pain is happening along with potential new life - even if unseen.

As in times past, this last week this trust accompanied my own aching, and I was
grateful for the shift that happened in its own time, a weight lifted from my heart as a
physical sensation of expansion, and deeper communion with the world heart, rolled
forth.

Amidst the hearts shucked open in this catastrophe, many of us are becoming more
able receive the life force we call LOVE, to give it, to breathe its interconnection
with all of life, and to feel this energy create spaciousness for more, Love.

Love is breathed by spirit, and spirit made into flesh: this is what true
prosperity as taught by the great teachers is all about, unlike the poverty-
of-spirit that usually plagues our addictive culture of the American Dream.
The flipside of this Dream being all our worst fears rolled into one Nightmare
called "Massive Hurricane Hits a Below Sea-level Manmade City" or perhaps,
"Federal Redirection of Levee Funds towards Warmongering in 2004 Creates
Human & Ecological Catastrophe in the Homeland's own Gulf."

Where prolonged human suffering due to mass abandonment & the
dysfunctions of politics, police, and military warriors in a profoundly heartless
lack of planning contains such outrages as no special considerations for
pregnant women (such as accomodations at the central Hotels) during the
well-intentioned police-conducted admissions to the now infamous
Superdome. This resulted in 6 births (stress-induced no doubt, and with other
factors like drug withdrawal possibly at play for some) in the horrific New
Orleans coliseum conditions, without any safe privacy or basic hygiene, as we
all know. Likewise, at the other end of the spectrum, a handful of very
elderly ladies in their late 90s and early 100s were ignored as well, another act
of dishonor for any civilization that wants to last. And of course, all the
children, a significant number of whom were in the care of overwhelmed
grandmother-caregivers, and all the defenseless disabled, at great peril as
hard-drug addicts went into withdrawal psychosis.

And don't even get me started on the separation of premature babies from
their mothers during hospital evacuations. And the senseless, unnecessary
separation of filthy, exhausted evacuees from their dearly loved animal
companions that they had worked so very hard to save, as they boarded
buses and planes like cattle, with no luggage.

I'm holding a special prayer out for the reportedly little boy who had his
likewise little dog (emotional mascot, and only thing he carried) literally
wrenched from his arms by a shellshocked policeman as he screamed
Snowball! Snowball! and fought with all his might to command the return of
his companion, overpowered by the madness of adult authorities. That child
has been taught thereby, to become as hardhearted as the ignorant
guardsman and whoever else added insult to injury in their shortsighted
management of a grave spiritual responsibility called COMPASSION.   We all
shoulder the loss of that child's Snowball-part of his heart, upon our national
heart - both the childlike innocence that names a little dog Snowball, and the
utter devastation of having survived so much together and being separated
by total strangers.

[A blessed sidenote to this is that many people have been deeply moved by
AP reports of this story, and are involved in seeking to reunite Snowball and
his boy. Though thankfully the dog is believed to be found, identified
through film footage of the bus loading zone scene, the child is being sought
in shelters and across evacuee communication networks.]

In a landscape of American catastrophe on all levels, the whole world is not
only watching aghast, it has taken action - in astonishing compassion. It was
our much ignored friends to the north, CANADIANS, who were the first
rescue teams in New Orleans, for example. It was out-of-state non-profit aid
groups who arrived on the highways of storm refugees, days before anything
resembling federal relief. And even the tiny country of Sri Lanka, beleagured
with its own tsunami recoveries and third world status, sent $25,000.

It is an international audience, along with a national audience, that has held
witness to another breaking of the heart of America, a shift of 'life as we
know it' unprecedented by the sheer numbers of people affected in
community, economy, geography, and ecology: living, dead, lost, displaced,
outraged... A blessing in this epic tragedy is the spirit of truth-speaking
which has swept across the news media, as well as the spirit of volunteerism
moving across the land - "Heartening," as a dear friend put it, and I couldn't
agree more.

The famously arrogant "American Heart", so conditioned to consumerism,
addictions, and metabolic cycles of stress, is again sensitized to some
awareness of something more:   a devastated New Orleans, the bayous, and
rural towns along with much human failure in the government, local to
federal.   And many folks want to respond to the suffering of people and
places, and are doing so with pocketbooks, shelter volunteering, and
fundraisers, quite beautifully... Yet relief agencies are prepared for a falling
away of volunteers and monies as the months go by and the 'newness' wears
off and a portion of us falls back asleep in the distractions and emotional
disconnections of our pre-Katrina/tsunami/9-11 past selves - proceeding to
dissociate from our hearts.

Yes, the world is seeing that the Emperor has no clothes. An international
audience is seeing documentary footage that looks no different from any
Third World dictatorship's sorry attempts to deal with the outcast poor
masses and displaced peoples in or out of disaster zones. The longstanding
spiritual bankruptcy of America politics (regardless of creed), is being
blatantly revealed in most every direction thanks, bittersweetly, to nature &
global warming combined in a "Storm of All Storms" called Hurricane Katrina.

In this beautiful land of many lands that is called America, genocide of the
natives, slavery (of Natives, Africans, and Chinese), and 'manifest destiny'
justifications have indeed manifested a global superpower of military
domination, multinational corporate greed, and United Nations
insubordinations point blanc. As regards the things that really matter to our
daily humanity like social health, community, and ecological stewardship -
well, these days some people - like you, like me, are thinking of them more,
and intent on making a new world, not just a 'kinder, gentler, America,' (as
the father of the current emperor campaigned for along with war).

As the christian mystics,vedic philosophers, and shamans have said, the new
world is being made anyway, every day in our hearts, as well as in the ages of
the world heart. For those of us who stay with the evolving energy of this
increasingly "Awakened Heart" and the creation of stronger community spirit
thereby, we find we are creating our days and relationships in such a way
that moment-to-moment living is a lesson in being fully here, fully present to
this wondrous connection to life on this earth - something rooted in our own
heart's chemistry since before birth.

In this experience of feeling our hearts expand, sometimes painfully, in
compassion, we realize new self-compassion as well. As many of you already
know, the Buddha said:

and as Christ said,

And, as 82 year old Father Thomas Keating,(monk, prolific author on christian
mysticism, and beloved founder of the contemplative prayer movement) said
a few days ago in reference to the contemplative person's response to these
catestrophic times in America: "Love your neighbor, as you do yourself.
Nothing more is required! ...It's just that practically nobody else is doing it,
THAT's the problem!"

After New Orleans, the key question is:

as Mark Shields, national commentator and columnist put it. I would change it
slightly, to "It's Me AND We," as the core quantum leap towards inhabiting our
interdependence and glorious potential.

Before New Orleans, we already had a dreadful inner city poverty,
homelessness, and indigent mentally ill problem and lots of folks deserving of
help beyond welfare breadcrumbs.   We already had the most pathetically
underfunded and pedagogically barren public education systems in the
western world. And with the recent catastrophe, we tragically face again the
madness of our government's values, and a call to shed light on this madness
of social neglect and spiritual bankruptcy, perceiving what ways we ourselves
have been half asleep.

As Jesse Jackson so heartfully described who America's working poor are:

"They catch the early bus. They work every day. They raise other people's
children. They work every day. They change the beds you slept in these
hotels last night and cannot get a union contract. They work every day.
They work in hospitals. I know they do. They wipe the bodies of those are
sick with fever and pain. They empty their bedpans. They clean out their
commode. No job is beneath them, and yet when they get sick, they cannot
lie in the bed they made up every day. That is not right. We are a better
nation than that ...".

Since the 1980s, plentiful human development & economic scholars have
pointed out that if only 1/3 of the military budget was diverted towards
these goals of homeland well-being, it would be a dramatic transformation of
sustainable infrastructure and long-term social health benefits for the nation's
children. Considering that half of every dollar paid by citizens in federal tax is
earmarked for the military budget by the government, this social
reinvestment issue is not some far-fetched ideal - it is simply a suitable
response to what the world on the local level needs now more than ever:
deep respect of our interdependence and the Cycle of Life.

As we deal with this national disaster of massive social, spiritual, ecological,
economic, political, and cultural impact, there is also much grieving still to
move through for those lost in the flood, the winds, and side effects from
torn up emotional roots of what HOME is. There is an extremely short-notice
diaspora of hundreds of thousands of people of all classes, in various stages of
shock with untold roads ahead through post-traumatic stress yet to unfold.

If your heart is cracked open, let it keep expanding, breathing with and
through the contracted moments that happen in the human condition -
notice it all. The more your heart is connected to the One Heart, the more
healing you give to world in your presence and the actions you do.

In Yoga, the heart center is where the energies of the earth and the heavens
mingle in infinite creativity, helping us be at home wherever we are, and thus
be fully present to our community spirit in any situation, while wise to our
survival and choices .Right now, we are facing some time-sensitive continued
ecological tragedies around New Orleans that affect us all (learn more, take
action, and tell your friends) .

Gratitude and Compassion, be AWAKE in us, as the world changes, Time
changes, and we change.