"Call to Awaken" ©   1999  ~ colored pencil by Carol E. Fairbanks

"Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are, in fact, plans to protect man." 
                        ~ Stewart Udall,  politician, author and former Secretary of the Interior

                           On the Verge of Awakening

Things are not always as they seem.  Our life can appear to be falling apart, when it's really a new beginning that is being birthed. It's emergence can be hinting of wonderful things that are "sprouting" above the limitations that we impose on our vision, but most of the time we are only looking at the things that are fading away.  Usually our growth, individually and collectively, doesn't happen with our cheering it on. That evolution of growth, that happens when the conditions are "right", is often viewed as "terrible", "sad", and every other fearful word that one can think of.  But with that threat of loss, comes an energy in us that propels us to an action that finally honors the truth that is becoming visible.

Maybe it is not such a "bad" thing that the National Parks have been closed by a discordant group of governing people (that we elected!).  With this event in the news, maybe we can finally see the true value that our parks are to our lives and our country..... and even to the world!  One thing is for sure...this really has gotten everyone's attention!  And hopefully, this denial of access to our valuable National Parks will awaken in everyone's heart how precious they are.  Unfortunately, it is only when we appear to "lose" what we value that we finally wake up and start really fighting for it.... with money, action and voice!  

My pencil drawing, "Call to Awaken" was created at a mandala retreat on Whidbey Island in Washington in 1999.  It was the year of incredible change for me, as I was recovering from a "life threatening" illness that was forcing me to reassess my entire life. The illusions of what I thought was important were falling away and being replaced with another, truer version of what my incarnation meant.  The saying, "what doesn't "kill" me will strengthen me" inspired me to rise above my fear and seek out a new definition of myself and my world.  So, I went to the mandala teacher training retreat, appearing to have "lost" myself, and at the end of that wonderfully creative week, where my imagery revealed a greater truth to me, I was dancing and laughing.

The birthing of the new, which is inevitable, happens in spite of our efforts to hold onto the outdated versions that threaten to limit us and sabotage our growth.  The birth does not "happen" in our heads, though; it happens rather in our hearts. Dorothy Day, whose life was changed dramatically through her heart, said. "The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us."  

So whatever the change is that awakens and opens our heart, it then becomes the channel of the new way of thinking and being. That new reality of the heart always opens us to the truth of oneness....of human, animal, plant and mineral... of oneness of all of creation.  When we awaken to that truth, one heart at a time, we will at last move away from that consciousness of separation and competition. We will finally know that the care of our environment is an act of love for ourselves. And we are all on the verge of that awakening.  We are being called now to "wake up" and "see" that new vision, and we can do this with great chaos and struggle or with cooperative loving hearts.  The choice is ours.