Hope for Tomorrow

[Connut]

While watching events unfold in New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf Coast, I have been aware of shame and the urge to expiate this feeling through the apparently more empowering emotions of anger and blame. I have learned some things about this dynamic. Shame, anger and blame are my emotion’s way of getting me to pay attention to Cause and Effect. The hurricane in New Orleans did not happen to happen. It is the result of numerous chains of cause and effect extending back for years. We all have made decisions either personally or through what we putatively believe to be our elected public servants. These decisions were to either take actions or not that inevitably resulted in the apocalypse being visited upon New Orleans and our Nation. We have sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind.<br><br>Is it fair that more often than not, the people immediately hurt most by this apocalypse are the most innocent of its causes? Cause and Effect is harsh because it is detached from the fair. Cause and Effect is just and loving because it is the law that makes life possible. There is a way to live with equanimity during the troubles of this still unfolding disaster. If we follow in the shadow of Cause and Effect and act with the same combination of detachment and love, we will be the eye of the storm. We will be the calm center of the storm of tribulation that is being visited upon our country.<br><br>As the rising waters of the Gulf of Mexico filled the fair city of New Orleans, so has our awareness of the troubles risen to engulf our everyday consciousness. We need not waste our energies in guilt, shame or blame. Where there are elected officials in the public service who have failed to perform their functions responsibly, we can with detachment and love remove them and place them in positions where their talents will be of greater service. Where our choices have led to the disaster, we can, with the same detachment and love, change our way of living to mitigate the ongoing apocalypse.<br><br>Perhaps you think this too much to hope for, or too facile a recipe for change. Perhaps you are right. I do know that if we don’t pay attention to the rising waters now, they will keep rising until we either attend to them or we drown in ignorance.<br><br>Willary <p></p><i></i>