[This is a shorter, less formal version of an article that appears here.]
I don't know if you guys have heard about the flash floods in Boscastle in the UK, but we were there, having a 'holiday' when the skies opened. Within an hour of arriving there as a tourist, I watched 80 cars being picked up like dinky toys and doing their convoluted dance out to sea. Within three hours half a bridge was washed away, many buildings were destroyed, people's houses and possessions floated away, roads were lifted up and crashed down onto cars like the jaws of a monster masticating its prey.
My most poignant memory of the disaster I witnessed was not the screams of those trapped in flood water, the sound of lightning hitting a car, the look on a small child's face as two feet of flood water separated her and her mother or the sight of cars and posessions being swept out to sea. It was of perfectly able-bodied adults who stood and watched the horrors unfold in front without doing anything to help.
What I witnessed was the true poison of television.
Every night, we watch horrific scenes of disasters; people clinging to life or dying, war, famine, rape or flash floods. It always happens to someone else. We accept television as a normal (and in many cases necessary) part of our lives. We grow up with it and get more and more desensitised so that we need stronger graphic images to
feel anything. Passive television viewing shuts down our instincts and destroys the fight or flight mechanism. The majority of people I saw were totally divorced of their basic human instinct to help or get away to safety. They were simply standing around, being entertained; they were tranced, devoid of reality, cut off from their most primal selves. They were watching a live thriller -- an action packed movie.
The other thing I saw was the power of Mother Nature; she's fighting back -- we have abused her, bled her dry, raped her and continue to belittle her, believing we can better her. I witnessed her having her say this week. In the tragedy there was beauty and enormous strength. Such an energy: the true primal power of a roaring woman, and my, she roared like a woman whose child's life was in danger. Ironic perhaps that everything she devastated was manmade: a bridge, cars, roads, buildings, rubbish skips. As it all washed out to sea, I sensed her dusting her hands down the front of her apron -- a job well done.
She's playing more than fair. She took nobody's life, she just took what she needed to in order to try and get us to listen and respect her -- our manmade crap that seeks to mutilate her beauty.
Play lightly on the earth dear friends, sing your songs to her heart, tickle her gently with your laughter, make the stars shine with your love and compassion for her. It's time for us to nurture her; for too long we have taken from her. I've seen her in action this week and I know it was only the tip of the iceberg -- the devastation caused was just a whisper compared to the power that lies within her.
It was incredible to watch, in less than four hours, the total of everything people had worked their lives for washed away and destroyed. It made me re-think my addiction to certain material posessions big time. Ironically for me, the one thing I 'need' (my laptop) was under my car seat, ended up in river of muddy water and is not covered by insurance. What sort of a message is
that from the Universe?!
In the blink of an eye, everything these people had worked their lives for -- gone forever.
blessings,
Rachelle