Today I feel hopeful. My personal world is good. My spine feels a lot better, which makes all the difference in my outlook. Pain and impaired mobility can really drag me down.

Barcelona Spain is out of water. A ship with 5 million gallons of water was brought to the city this week, and there is a fine of 5 million euros for watering flowers. Australia, China, Israel, all in water crisis. Los Angeles is going to start rationing water.

“Theft” of used cooking grease from the fast-food poison food oulets is increasing as people now know how to use this substance for fueling vehicles. At least those outlets are producing something useful!

It’s all happening. The many gradual changes are mounting. The wave is building momentum.

I have spent my adult life consciously preparing for these changes. That doesn’t mean I am prepared, but the feeling of waiting for the shit to hit the fan is being replaced by awareness of the shit actually hitting the fan...from the frying pan to the fire? Yet, it’s a relief not to just be waiting.

It must seem odd for those bits of information to follow a statement about feeling hopeful, but it makes total sense to me. The state of waiting challenges my sense of ability to respond, but as the waiting ends and the situation becomes clearer, I find myself more easily mobilized to act. The experience of my spine and mobility alongside these thoughts about waiting and acting “fits” to me. I wonder how many other people have a similar experience, or even a similar feeling.

Yesterday the server was down for one of my email accounts. I couldn’t get a number of US websites to load, like the New York Times and CNN. I wondered, has the government closed down the US internet? Has there been a bombing? Neither of those things had happened, but it was an interesting moment. These things are very possible, and how will I respond? How will people be affected?

I don’t mean to be a doomsayer. In fact I do not feel impending doom. I do feel change in the wind. The corporate governments are scrambling to retain control, and gradually it is slipping away from them, and as it does they become more desperate and oppressive. Humans, however, cannot control nature, and we are part of nature. As situations become increasingly dire, the mass of humanity will become less and less malleable by the manipulators. Even Katy Couric, corporate whore, said this week that she felt pressured by the government to promote the war. Scott McClellan, former Bush spokesliar has come out with his mea culpa book “exposing” the dishonesty of the Bush cabal. Rats deserting a sinking ship? It’s a pity the rats didn’t speak up sooner but hey, I’m sure they were caught up in fear-based self preservation, and status seeking, and belief.

It is increasingly clear that it is up to each of us to choose how we will be part of solutions. I imagine and hope that even people who have been duped and complicit are beginning to see beyond their beliefs and fears. There are seriously dark clouds coming...they are closer than the horizon, and the storm they bring will uproot and scour, and isn’t that nature’s way? I don’t mean to sound so biblical, being such a pagan and all, but a good metaphor is hard to resist.

I teach this class online, Healing Magic. The gist of the material is to stimulate awareness, a sense of being part of the web of life and thus able to act in support of life. I know this blog reaches a relatively small number of people, many of whom I know personally, and know to be actively involved in supporting life and solutions and all that good stuff. I visualize Earth and the people I know here who are doing this work each in their own way; maybe a few hundred that I personally know. And they all know more people doing the same thing in their unique ways, and they know more, and on and on. Today I choose to be aware of the millions, maybe billions, who do see, who do want change, who do what they can, or at least what they think they can, and that adds up to a lot of people doing a lot of amazing things within themselves, their families, their communities. I’m cheering us on! We can do it, we can do more than we even know we are capable of, and it matters.

Chloe the cat is curled up on the bed, sleeping, comfortable, her person nearby, her belly full.

I believe in magic. The fog on the mountains, the rain, friends and family and lovers; the snail on the leaf, the birth of a new life, the death of a loved one or even one I didn’t know who touched my life...

...even the pain in my body. I believe in magic. I call it...existence. Some say there is a creator who is separate from what we call creation. Some say that creation and creator are one. I call it a mystery, and that is also magic.

I’m listening to a song called “Apple of my eye” written and sung by Rosalie Sorrels. I went to school briefly with one of her sons when she and her family lived in Vermont in 1975-76. Here is someone who is still out there making music, who has lived a life with joy and pain. This is a voice worth listening to.

This week marks the passing if Utah Phillips. He was a true bard, an activist, someone who spoke truth to power, who put his life into action. His presence will remain in his music and the memories so many people have of him. I met him once or twice when he and Rosalie did benefits for our little free school in Vermont.

I’m happy to report that I am much better today. Yay! I can stand, sit, walk, and all with much less pain. Halleluja!

It is intermittently warm & sunny, and thunder & lightening here today.

It is looking like the Urban Witchcamp in Amsterdam is not going to happen. I’m disappointed, but so it goes. I still hope for enough enrollment for the Urban Permaculture workshop. It is such topical material, and yet I imagine that rising fear levels and shrinking economic resources make people more likely to stay home and spend less.

I am revisiting my plans for the 4th quarter of 2008. I may be returning to the US as originally planned in mid-September. I’ll be looking for a diesel pickup truck, so if you hear or know of one, please keep me in mind.

Something that confounds me is the experience of offering something of value and having it not be well received, like these workshops. I know I am not a person to attend lots of events, and so that is part of it for other people as well, but I am fascinated by the experience of having the workshops be well attended in some places, and not so in others.

I am open to possibilities and curious to see what happens over the next three months, and how that all will effect my trajectory.

A friend emailed me today, referring to yesterday's post and said "...wonder what it is you're supposed to be learning.."

Today, with ibuprofin and a back brace, extra sleep and basically no activity, I am feeling better. My lumbar spine still hurts, and my mobility is affected, but I feel better. I am able to work online, communicate with my project co-workers in Holland via email, do some promotion via email, and just be. The weather is intermittently sunny and cloudy.

So what I am learning, again, is to make the best of what’s in front of me and trust the flow, even when it is uncomfortable, uncertain, and scary.