Coming into our own.

As our earth shakes and shudders with the upheavals of this past year, we can feel the movement echo through our own deep center. Times, they are a changing, and we feel the changes. For only a blip on the timeline of creation, we have become technologically civilized. And only for a moment, the second it takes to inhale sharply, we have dropped the thread that connects us with the powers that made us and re-make us every moment. We have become dazzled by the wonder of ourselves and what we can construct and destruct. How do we find that precious thread again?

When the tsunami slammed full force into the other side of the world, I was on a wild and sunny cliff in Puerto Rico, making sacred offerings to the Caribbean Sea. When I returned to the states and saw the news of the destruction, I was floored. Then, later, I experienced the tragedy in New Orleans followed by other weather catastrophes across the globe. What had happened to make Grandmother Ocean swallow so many people, so many dreams? What gave rise to the angry winds? I hear the answer whisper in my own dreams and prayers. I see it around me in the forest and driving down the street.

In this issue, we've asked writers, friends, and leaders to help us come to terms with the cycles of destruction and creation in which we find ourselves. What is it all about, and how do we talk about it? How do we draw together, both within our human communities and by reaching out to the teachers all around us in the sky, the sea, the forest, the cracks in the city sidewalk? How do we open our eyes to our cultural blindness and begin to learn again from our elders, our children, our ancestors?

What a comfort it is to know that a greater wisdom than mine or yours is in charge of the unfolding of life. To know that everything, from the tsunami to the sunrise, is filled with a purpose that is beyond the mind. Tragedy and heartbreak offer us so many opportunities to wake up, to give aid, to sympathize, to learn the blessing of hope. That thread of hope, of acceptance of what is, of wonder, may lead us back to what is most precious in life.