Shame

We are a proud lot, we Americans. We think very highly of ourselves and our abilities. It rallies us through much adversity.

But pride becomes arrogance when we ignore our flaws, don't listen, aren't sensitive.

Now we see the third world brought to one of our most beloved cities. Our city. In many ways, one of our most central hearts of culture.

I've heard it said in my travels that New Orleans is so precious it doesn't deserve to be in the United States -- we don't appreciate it.

We, in this country, hang our heads now. We feel shame that these are our citizens, in our country. It looks like a horror in Haiti.

We have failed somewhere and we dread to look at it.

The failure of government manifests broadly, at every level.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley exclaimed, "I was shocked. We are ready to provide considerably more help than they have requested," the mayor said, barely able to contain his anger during a City Hall news conference. "We are just waiting for the call.

"The people we see suffering on television are our brothers and sisters," Daley said. "It's incumbent on all of us, as American citizens and fellow human beings, to do our part to help them through this terrible tragedy."

According to the Chicago Tribune, in the event of a disaster, the city offered to send 44 Chicago Fire Department rescue and medical personnel and their gear, more than 100 Chicago police officers, 140 Streets and Sanitation, 146 Public Health and 8 Human Services workers, and a fleet of vehicles including 29 trucks, two boats and a mobile clinic.

"So far FEMA has requested only one piece of equipment -- a tank truck to support the Illinois Emergency Response Team, which is already down there," Daley said. "The tank truck is on its way. We are awaiting further instructions from FEMA."

When government cannot care for those most vulnerable, we lose faith that it can care for any of us.

Did it not occur to planners that evacuation plans that relied on private ownership of vehicles would leave 100,000 and more behind? There are those who cannot buy a car. There are those who cannot drive.

Telling prejudices arise: From Harper's Index, August:
Number of bars visited this spring by an undercover team investigating racial discrimination: 40
Percentage of bars that charged black customers more than white customers: 40

That statistic is horrible. Something is very wrong with how we've been treating each other on a daily, basic level.

We now are forced to examine all of it. I pray we find in it a path to a better nation -- to see the brothers and sisters around us, who have always been there, on a daily, basic level.

Sinking beneath waters

The devastation of the Gulf is heartbreaking. Hopelessness and despair in the faces of so many. The stories are causing journalists to breakdown -- jaded journalists. My heart goes out to them, to us.

I had read about the catastrophe waiting to happen in New Orleans last year in the Global Warning issue of National Geographic. Here it is almost to the picture.

We could have fixed the levees -- apparently the problems were well known. But we went on with our usual lives instead.

Look folks, the earth isn't kidding around here. With global warming, storms are going to get more severe and more frequent. High water temperatures are a key ingredient in hurricanes, and ocean water temperature is increasing. Katrina was so severe in part because the water all over the Gulf was solidly hot.

We can't walk around in a stupor thinking that what we're in the habit of doing is gonna be just fine forever and ever.

Like the guy who's just had a heart attack, we're gonna have to make some changes to how we're living. The heart attack guy has to change his diet, his exercise routine, how he handles stress. We too need to change what we're doing.

They're just habits. We can form healthier ones. Find other more nurturing ways to interact with this planet.

Collectively, we can identify with the folks in New Orleans. We've had dreams of sinking beneath waters. What are those dreams trying to tell us?

We know what we need to do. We dare not ignore these warnings.

Let us not kick ourselves as the climate collapses, saying we could have averted this disaster, but we went on with our usual lives instead.

Social permission to help each other

I woke yesterday at 5:00am California time feeling very uncomfortable. What's going on, I tried to figure out. Pre-earthquake jitters? Oh... then I realized in my groggy anxiety, Katrina is about to hit land.

I turned on the television and saw Katrina's menacing red flames swirling on the radar just off land's edge.

The thought came to me in that state between sleep and wake: Earth looks pretty angry right now.

I acknowledged the anger, since that's what it looked like. God knows, Earth sure has some pretty damn good reasons to be mad, if she is. I'd be mad if I were her.

I meditated -- sent soothing thoughts to Earth and to the people of that area. Prayers for a long while till I fell off to sleep again.

When I woke three hours later, Katrina had been downgraded from a category 4 to a category 3 storm. Earth calmed down a bit.

Another thought came to me: in these huge catastrophes, we give ourselves social permission to be kind to one another, to strangers. We go about rescuing, sharing, sheltering people we don't know. As if they were important to us.

Is that what it takes for us to get it? Disasters?

It takes disasters for us to be compassionate with each other?

Just conjecture here, but since, as I said in my last post, we're set up to expect to be loved without condition, my guess is we are also set up to draw to us what we hunger for. In the current state of the world, expressions of unconditional love are so rare. Virtually the only time we see it expressed in a large way is in the middle of disasters.

If, as quantum physics suggests, the universe responds to what we're subconsciously needing, maybe in this time of widespread shutting off from each other, disasters are the only tried and true mechanism we know of to elicit widespread unconditional love. To open our hearts.

If it is, that is a damn sad state of affairs.

I say we don't need to wait for disasters to give ourselves the social food we are all craving. Let's give ourselves social permission right now to care about each other and act on it, for no other reason than it's what we're all so hungry for.

What we're doing is well worth doing

The pause in my blogging has been a regrouping, a shift in many things. Ultimately a decision on my part that what I'm doing is worth doing. What I'm pursuing is worth pursuing.

Inspired really by a Kris Kristofferson song I heard anew at a Western Beat tribute night a few months ago in a local joint, Highland Grounds -- a night conceived by Americana list goddess Bliss (www.americanarootsla.net).

"’cause I think what they've done is well worth doin'
And they'’re doin'’ it the best way that they can..."

The song's about all the great musicians in Nashville at the time (1976) that everyone was poo-pooing: Hank Williams, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson.... You know those legends... well, folks didn't all like them back then.

"And if you don't like Hank Williams, honey, you can kiss my ass."

I realized that on another level, the song was talking about now -- in the LA music scene first of all -- LA music is the most invigorated it's been in a decade, according to veterans, and it's all because of the renewed interest in roots and alt-country music, they tell me.

The Vaquetones, James Intveld, Mike Stinson are just a few of the talents I'm blessed to hear in this town every month...

I think that what they're doing is well worth doing.

I also realized that I needed to look at what I was doing in the same light -- that what I was doing was well worth doing and at the end of my life I would be proud of myself for pushing forward with this idea so few fully believe in or act as if it is possible.

Peace among the people on earth.

I know that it is possible. Not only that it's possible, but that it's our birthright. It's what we deserve. That's right -- we human beings deserve to be treated with honor, respect, appreciation. So do animals. So does the planet. All of us, not just some of us.

This is, I'm realizing, a radical idea.

It changes everything.

But I believe it's much more our human nature than the current predominant worldview would have us believe.

I've read psychological theories that describe how, as babies, we're set up from day one to expect to receive love, so we interpret any abuse we receive in early years as "love." Once we're grown, therefore, we create in our lives the very conditions that will recreate the abuse because our early experience wired our brains to subconsciously understand the abuse as nurturing "love."

Yikes.

So it's gonna take some rewiring. We can do that work.

The key here is that we COME IN expecting to be loved without condition.

Marianne Williamson spoke yesterday here in LA and told of a cruise she'd taken recently in Alaska. Some kayakers paddled by. All the folks on the cruise boat happily waved and the kayakers happily waved back. Wait a minute, Marianne thought, how'd you know you'd even like these guys? The observation prompted her thought that it's the natural initial tendency of human beings to treat each other like brothers and sisters.

The millennium, for example, she said, was a worldwide party -- people riding on the Subway in NYC even spoke to each other -- but the day itself wasn't different from any other day, in truth. The sole difference was, on that day, we gave ourselves social permission to treat each other like brothers and sisters. Social permission. That's all that was necessary for the natural tendency to take over.

Here's another radical idea... maybe all that's needed is to drop the BS that stops us from seeing each other as brothers and sisters.

To me, as a rose is a rose is a rose, a human is a human is a human. The species is defined by DNA -- and we all share pretty much all of it.

So I press on. Doing it the best way that I can.

The best way for me is through nurturing self worth and joy in the world. Imagine Festival is one engine for that. To open the possibility that solutions are before us all the time, we simply need to discover how to apply them. To create spaces that perhaps will help people run into the magic that is out there for them and bring it into their lives. To encourage folks to own their power. To take the steps we need to get to peace.

And to imagine beyond that... for me, peace is just the beginning.

Another Kris Kristofferson song caught my ear -- To Beat the Devil

"And you still can hear me singing to the people who don't listen
To the things that I am saying, praying someone's going to hear;
And I guess I'll die explaining how the things that they complain about
Are things they could be changing, hoping someone's goin' to care.

"I was born a lonely singer and I'm bound to die the same
But I've got to feed the hunger in my soul;
And if I never have a nickel I won't ever die of shame
’cause I don't believe that no-one wants to know!"

Thank you Kris -- I've decided not to believe that no one wants to know.