Finding Peace Amidst Fear, Destruction, and Chaos

I'm fine mainly because I'm pretty safe here in atlanta.  I don't have any wildfires nor any hurricanes.  It's great to be me :-D

I love that you have this joy and security in your life. May you always feel this and continue to live with this kind of sense and sensibility. Blessings to you ❣

Michele,  I live in Portland and I feel your fear.  My husband and I experienced the thick smoke in Portland for a couple of weeks before we recently left for a road trip.  We went to the Oregon Coast and drove south on Hwy 101 and the smoke from the fires has chased us the whole way.  We woke the morning after our first night in Yachats to the smell of smoke and a thick haze.  We left quickly thinking that if we drove further south we could outrun it wondering if roads would be closed but it's followed us the entire way.  In Smith River we had a layer of ash over our car when we left in the morning and I just heard last night that Portland is covered in ash.

During our travels we stumbled upon the redwoods and were literally stopped in our tracks with the beauty, the majesty of these trees - these giants that have lived longer than any of us and I grieved for our forests.  I know the redwoods are hard to burn and I'm thankful for that but with the intensity and frequency of these increasing fires how long before they succumb?

We're in San Francisco right now only a day after a ridiculous heat wave of 108 degrees.  108!  In San Francisco!  We lived here for many years and couldn't even imagine the temperature getting anywhere close to that. 

I'm afraid for our beautiful lands.  Not only from the climate change that is being ignored by greedy people but from these same greedy people who want to keep sucking the life out of our planet by logging, drilling, fracking, gouging the earth with their great machines that take and take and take.

I'm experiencing a personal transformation of hope and strength and am putting all my energy into sending strength and love to the world but there are those moments when I'm surrounded by smoke and see firefighters rushing down the highway to the next fire that the dread grabs my heart.

I'm choosing to not hide from the truth of what's happening to our world but at the same time rising above to send out love and gratitude.  I recently heard someone say that the universe loves gratitude and responds with gifts.  I'm choosing to believe that's true.

Everyone, please send love to the world, to the universe and to those who are blind to it's beauty.

Peace.

Thank you  Michele, and KC.  I am moved by your posts. I share your fears.   And your  gratitude for the natural beauty.  We hiked in Sequoia a few years ago and I felt as if we were walking amongst gods.  

To imagine these great trees succumbing to the kinds of fires that may lay ahead of us is too much.  

The people who are driving the climate denial are the Dark Money oligarchs and their puppets are unfathomable to me. I get a sense of their childhood deprivation but still can't wrap my head around their psyches.  Nor can I understand how they were able to create such a great divide in this country. 

Hello, I am new to this forum. I am amazed at all of the enlightened insight and hope that is expressed here. After a most difficult year filled with disbelief, anxiety, and anger, I am awakening from a dark slumber of apathy. This forum is a respite of truth and light to hold onto with as we trudge through the changing times. As this beautiful world proceeds to unfold its' truths, layed out for all to see, may we finally open our eyes! I am hopeful again. I am mad, thank God! And I am alive to help move many souls into a brighter day. Thank you all for your insight!

Thank-you, Timo for reviving this thread in the New Year and welcome to our community! The main World Prediction Page comment section is stuck right now. I have developers working on it tonight and over the next few days, so when it's fixed you can use it as well.  But I'm glad that it's forced us to get more into this Forum where we can have longer and deeper conversations. 

Thanks to Timo who revived this thread - Am rereading  it, and Michele and  Nihilist, your strength and large-heartedness takes my breath away.  We are going to be okay, I know it. Life will keep going, I know it.  It takes a lot of self care to stay strong when you feel so much of the world and love our world like a mother loves her child, like a child loves her mother. 

The redwoods have survived great fires before and they can do it again. 

Michele - I found your website I think . Wow!  Everyone should see this! 

Wow, beautiful quilts at Michele's site ... thank you, Jeanne!

Yes, Jeanne, you found my blog. I teared up and feel so humbled by your lovely, generous comment and the sharing of the link. Thank you so much dear, dear lady. And Grace, thank you as well!  

I can't believe how beautiful your quilts are, Michele. They are like you - filled with joy and love...and strength. 

Thank you truly, Jeanne. You are so generous.  To be honest, I have to stop myself from embarrassment at any kind of personal recognition even though i really put my self out there in very personal ways on my blog. I don't see myself as a quilter. Making them is like gardening to me.  Sinking myself into the fabric like a metaphor for the equivalent of plunging my hands into earth. It's a kind of grounding and release into another state of being.  And it provides a creative expression on one hand and a sharing of my healing and spritual energies in a way that's not as draining as the other practices I once focused on as a way of sending out and doing good. I'm a lifelong volunteer and  a cause oriented person who can get a bit of OCD going when i feel the call to do, help, or give in whatever ways i can physically/energetically/spiritually give. When i look at my life, i often don't feel as if any of it happened or i did or do anything at all and and actually feel embarrassed at people even saying "I read your blog."  It's an altered state version of me in over drive. But at the same time it's also very nice when time and energy are recognized and touches others in any energetic or sensory way. You are an artist of the heart and spirit through your artwork, your tarot, all of the classes, this site and in so many other giving ways so i know you can relate! Look at all that you do in all the many ways you do them! Mirrors in the same tribe ;-)