Author¹s Occasional Newsletter
from Steven McFadden
http://www.chironcommunications.com
Vol. 7 No. 3 © March 6, 2002
‹ Redeeming an Unholy Fire ‹
Pilgrimage to the Poisoned Heart of Avanu The flame, flickering in a lantern borne by pilgrims on foot, was largely ignored in Los Alamos. Still, the pilgrims completed the work of spiritual redemption they had come to accomplish, and then they walked on toward the East, planning to arrive in New York City on May 12, 2002. Their visit to this place of fire is of marked spiritual significance.
(See the Chiron web site for photos:
http://www.chiron-communications.com/communique%20%207-3.html)
In the beginning, it is said, the four nations lived together as one and shared their gifts. Then came a time when it was necessary for spiritual growth that the Four Nations disperse to the Four Directions and live apart. Over time they could develop as human beings and master the mysteries of their element for good or ill, according to their free will. Earth, air, fire and water ‹ the peoples went apart.
At a crucial juncture of world history, the story relates, the four nations would come together again on Turtle Island. By intermingling again, it was said, they would have an opportunity to share and teach ‹ to put their gifts together in a new and beautiful way. If they neglected to do this, if they were distracted by fear and greed, then the people would face a monumental challenge.
As I see it, the imminence of that colossal challenge ‹ a global convergence of war, environmental destruction, Earth changes, and social chaos ‹ was brightly illuminated by the courageous spiritual deed of 30 pilgrims on February 26, and by the sacred fire they carried. Their story is worthy of note.
Walkers Behind the Storm
A bruising, roaring, dustchoked wind preceded the pilgrims and their flame. The stinging dust storm ripped across northern New Mexico and the streets of Los Alamos all day Monday, Feb. 25, 2002. Then that evening as the winds finally eased, 30 motley peace walkers entered Los Alamos bearing their flame. They quietly moved into the Unitarian Universalist church for the night, to share a meal and shelter.
The region they entered ‹ now called Los Alamos ‹ has been a fire center since prehistoric times. It was widely known and marked as a special node of material and spiritual fire, a place to be enaged only with the utmost respect. Now it is more widely known as the birthplace of the atomic bomb, and the home of the nation¹s nuclear weapons, Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Los Alamos is built on the eastern flank of The Valles Caldera, one of the largest "dormant" volcanoes in the world ‹ a vast, sleeping source of molten fire from the bowels of the planet. "Caldera" is the Spanish word for cauldron. Such a place on earth is formed from massive but infrequent eruptions. After the eruption ‹ much like a nuclear bomb but without poisonous radiation that endures for hundreds of thousands of year ‹ the blast hole fills with volcanic ash and pumice. Scientists say the vast, 15miles in diameter Valles Caldera last erupted a million years ago, and that it is now dormant.
When American scientists were drawn to this region in the 1940s to build the atomic bomb, they were ‹ as a matter of mystical consequence ‹ being magnetically drawn to the most potent and significant fire center of Turtle Island.
Carrying a Lantern
The prayer walk that came to Los Alamos in late February began January 15, 2002, at the grave of Chief Seattle in Washington state. A small band of pilgrims, coming from nations all over the world, began a walk across the US carrying a lantern with a flame ignited from the fires started by the nuclear bombs which obliterated Hiroshima, Japan. They are walking without recriminations, grievance or protest, but rather in solidarity with life and in peace. They seek mainly to give people an opportunity to partake of the flames¹ redeemed meaning and power.
The flame the pilgrims carry was ignited 57 years ago and has been tended with prayer ever since. In1945, after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, a man named Tatsuo Yamamoto walked into the ruins of the city to look for friends and family. In shock and anger, he collected some of the embers still smoldering from the bomb and carried them home.
Yamamoto¹s grandmother preserved the embers and kindled a flame, which was used to illuminate the family's prayer altar. For Yamamoto the smoldering embers symbolized his rage over what had happened; for his grandmother it symbolized love and the memory of the over 300,000 people who died directly from the atomic blast. Thousands of other human beings later died of cancers and related illnesses, or suffered mutations, directly attributable to the bomb¹s nuclear radiation.
Over the next 12 years Mr. Yamamoto's grandmother kept the flame with honor and respect. During this time Mr. Yamamoto underwent a complete change of heart. The flame on the altar transformed for him from a flame of hate and hostility into a flame of respect and love. Thanks to his family and a nearby monastery, the flame has been burning ‹ surrounded with prayers and incense ‹ since the moment of the Hiroshima blast on August 6, 1945.
Through the last 57 years the prayers of the people of Japan ‹ and others around the world ‹ have transformed that fiery expression from material to spiritual. The flame no longer harms people and destroys no life. It has become a quiet but potent focus of light and peace.
The 2002 Hiroshima Flame Interfaith Pilgrimage includes people of all colors and faiths. They are walking with a prayer of hope to end war and destruction. They say their effort is not a political statement, but a spiritual act. By walking and praying for peace, they say, they focus a common hope of all peoples and a common prayer for our mother the earth.
The Pilgrimage was organized by Sister Jun Yasuda, a Japanese Buddhist nun, and Tom Dostou, a citizen of the Wabanaki Alqonquin Nation in the Northeast region of Turtle Island. Jun San and Tom have been joined by peace pilgrims from around the world, an international group of all colors and faiths.
Material Realization
The very nature of the walk, and the very fact that the redeemed flame was returned to the source, prompt a realization. They symbolize a crucial choice the world must make now. That choice is between an essentially materialist culture fenced in by desire and dogma, or a fundamentally free culture that respects the living spirit in all of life.
The nuclear bomb is an ultimate expression of materialism. When the atomic scientists of Los Alamos took the secret of the atom ‹ the fundamental particle of matter ‹ and developed it into a weapon of mass destruction, they unleashed a scathing, wrathful demon of fire rather than a higher angel of warmth and illumination.
In splitting the atom scientists realized the core power of matter. In using it against life they became immersed in awe of and deference to the ultimate death‹dealing expression of materialism. This can be seen as a failure altogether to recognize and respect the spirit that resides in all sentient beings, and as trespass against a universal spiritual law: thou shalt not kill.
In works such as Lyrics from the Book of Nature and the Second Coming over Lindisfarne, Welsh poet Charles Lawrie has expressed the excruciating polarity of this choice in vivid terms, describing his inner images in response to the first nuclear explosion.*
ÿ Contrast the eyescalding light of the worldshattering bomb, against the radiant light of authentic spiritual revelation as in the Transfiguration.
ÿ Contrast the flash of heat that causes sands to melt to glass, against the warmth of love which touches every human being.
ÿ Contrast the blast wave of sheer energy moving swiftly out as a destructive shock, against the moral impact of what humans feel in response to the revelation of the indwelling spirit and the shame of their personal imperfections.
ÿ Contrast the deathdealing nuclear radiation (potent, invisible, lacking honor) against the lifegiving radiance which comes from nurturing other people and the earth we share.
ÿ Contrast the mushroom cloud, the crown of an antiking (who dispenses death, illness and suffering),against the coming in the clouds from the East, the radiant sky forms crowning a heavenly source of grace).
Vigil at the Place of Avanu
At sunrise on Tuesday, Feb. 26 the walkers arose at the Los Alamos Unitarian Universalist Church. They meditated for an hour, ate breakfast, and set out on a short walk downtown to the Los Alamos County Skateboard park. What is now a place for children to play, 50 years ago was the site of the first plutonium processing plant. There the walkers and a small band of local supporters formed a circle.
Shannyn Sollitt of Santa Fe, who guided the walk through the region, sounded strongly on a conch shell to honor the Four Directions. The Nichiren Buddhist monks chanted their familiar central tenet, Odaimoku: Na Mu Myo Ho Renge Kyo, "the Lotus Sutra of the True Dharma." Tom Dostou called upon several elders, who made prayers according to their traditions. Shannyn Sollitt called upon the Los Alamos National Laboratory to use their intelligence and skills not in service of war and death, but rather in service of life.
And then the pilgrims went on, walking about 10 zigzag miles through Los Alamos, prohibited by federal security from getting close to any of the many "sensitive areas" around and about Los Alamos. The US Energy Department banned the walk from approaching any of the labs, and from walking on any of the public roads that pass the labs. Since the walk came not for confrontation but to perform a spiritual service, the organizers changed the route without complaint. They walked and held vigil as close to the labs as they were permitted, and then they walked on.
In the afternoon the pilgrims walked further with the flame. They set out from nearby White Rock, New Mexico along Pajarito Rd, to the barbedwire fence outside the Los Alamos Lab¹s Area G. This is a global wonder, the world¹s largest nuclear waste dump. According to Shannyn Sollitt, over 50,000 drums of contaminated nuclear waste, some of them leaking their infernally toxic contents, the poisons slowly seeping into the earth to poison it and the scarce waters below for hundreds of generations to come.
Just behind the barbed wire and the warning signs which impotently strive to seal Area G off from the rest of the world, yet clearly visible from the road, are rock cliffs covered with petroglyphs. The glyphs were carved into the rock face of the outcropping thousands of years ago by the indigenous Pueblo peoples, whose descendents still live nearby. There are such petroglyphs all over North America, serving as signs and signals of importance to native peoples.
The Hiroshima Peace Flame walkers stopped and formed a circle across the road from a particular petroglyph, the carved image of Avanu. Avanu is depicted as a great serpent with a lightningbolt tongue. According to tradition, Avanu represents the sacred fire of the earth and sky, what modern spiritual scientists might refer to as Shakti, cosmic electric fire with the capacity to enlighten, or to burn and destroy if employed without wisdom.
Beholding this ancient stone carving, the walkers viscerally understood that the place where they had come ‹ Los Alamos, the city of nuclear fire ‹ had been built directly upon what has for many thousands of years been considered to be the home of Avanu, North America¹s seat of the Great Fire Mystery.
In this place, formerly regarded as worthy of careful respect, our National Lab has crapped out ton upon ton of desecrating nuclear poison.
Message on the Wind
From the place of Avanu, the walkers proceeded ‹ drumming and chanting every step of the way ‹ about seven miles to Tsankawi, a prehistoric site that is part of New Mexico¹s Bandelier National Monument. Tsankawi is a spectacular place high on a mesa overlooking the Jemez Mountains to the West and the Sangre de Christo Mountains to the East.
The walkers climbed to the top of the mesa with the Hiroshima flame and three Native American elders from the nearby San Ildefonso Pueblo ‹ whose ancestors once inhabited Tsankawi. With the sun setting in the west, the elders guided a simple ceremony, emphasizing peace and respect for all of the Sacred Hoop of life.
"You will need to be strong," one of the San Ildefonso elders said to the walkers, "for you will be called cowards and traitors. But it is an act of courage to choose sanity and peace when others are choosing hate and war."
"Right now," the elder said, "the Valles Caldera has the exact same technical classification that Mount Saint Helens had up until the time it exploded in a massive eruption. The scientists say it is dormant. But the caldera is not dormant, only sleeping. Some of our elders say it may have to awaken some day to cleanse all the poison that has been dumped here."
Atomic Aftermath
The wind people, the messengers, brought the flame home to its point of origin, having purified it with their chants, prayers and incense. They offered it to the people of the city without rancor, recrimination, or challenge. They offered the flame with understanding and hope. And then they walked on.
Not one scientist, not one of the new keepers of the fire, came out to behold the flame that was still burning from the nuclear holocaust started 57 years ago by the work done here. No one bore witness.
Except for a handful of locals and the UU church, the walk was ignored. Scientists and citizens drove by with barely a flicker of recognition or interest. The only people paying attention were the County Sheriffs. In marked cars they diligently shadowed the walk all day, remaining politely distant.
After the day in Los Alamos the walkers were hosted for a meal and sleeping accommodations at the San Ildefonso Pueblo community center. The next day ‹ February 27, 2002 ‹ the peace pilgrims departed the Los Alamos region quietly to walk East. On that same day, USA Today reported that radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons tests across the globe has caused at least 15,000 cancer deaths in U.S. residents born after 1951.
This information was obtained from an unreleased government study. Coupled with findings from previous government investigations, it suggests that 20,000 non-fatal cancers - and possibly many more - also can be tied to fallout from weapons tests. When fallout from all tests, domestic and foreign, is taken together, no U.S. resident born after 1951 has escaped exposure, the study says.
Also on that day, to sound an alarm about the rapidly growing danger of a nuclear conflagration, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved their famous Doomsday Clock forward two minutes closer to midnight. The scientists wanted to highlight the dramatically mounting dangers of political instability, the wide availability of nuclear materials, terrorism, and the aggressive stance of the US government.
The Hiroshima Peace Flame Walk will continue in the eastern half of the United States until May 12, 2002. It will end in New York at United Nations headquarters and at the site of the destroyed World Trade Center. To learn more about the walk and its schedule, visit this website: http://www.dharmawalk.org/
*For more on poet Charles Lawrie and an essay on the spiritual implications of the nuclear bomb, see "Nuclear Power, the Royal Stars, and the Destiny of Humanity" by David Tresemer, Ph.D. and Robert Schiappacasse
http://www.thestarhouse.org/documents/ChainReaction.pdf
A Plaudit for Legend of the Rainbow Warriors
Rev. Carol ParrishHarra of Sparrow Hawk Village in Oklahoma (http://www.sanctasophia.org) recently praised Steven McFadden¹s 2001 book, Legend of the Rainbow Warriors.She wrote: "Touching, inspiring, and encouraging, Legend of the Rainbow Warriors needs to be a school text to give our children a deep appreciation for the wisdom of elders and how each generation holds the future in its handsŠMy hat is off to Steven McFadden for the effort he made in collecting and recording such historic and timely stories."
Legend of the Rainbow Warriors (2001 ‹ Chiron Communications, ISBN # 0966523466) can be ordered through your local bookstore, by calling tollfree 18882852710, or online through the Chiron website).
Chiron Communications ‹ 2002 SCHEDULE
April 13-14 - Reiki I Training: Healing with Heart and Hands - Reiki (pronounced Ray-Key) is a Japanese word meaning universal life energy ‹ the energy that flows through all living things. It is also the name of a simple, effective technique for healing via the laying-on of hands. Reiki is a natural method of healing with the use of basic life energy.
Students must register in advance. $150 tuition. All who complete the course will be presented with Reiki I Certificates.
Reiki Masters Steven McFadden and Jacki Hayward Gauger have a combined 35 years experience with Reiki. They have traveled the Four Directions on pilgrimage, and met with elders from many cultures to discuss and experience life, ceremony, and healing. Steven is director of Chiron Communications and the author of Legend of the Rainbow Warriors; Farms of Tomorrow Revisited; and Profiles in Wisdom. Jacki is a nationally certified practitioner of therapeutic massage, a certified practitioner of CranioSacral therapy, and a certified facilitator of Transformational Breath. Both Steven and Jacki are also certified yoga instructors.
For information or to register contact Jacki at 410-343-0856 or e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
April 26 - Legend of the Rainbow Warriors - Evening Circle in the conference room at the Super 8 Motel in Sedona, Arizona. All are welcome. By donation. For information call Kathie Gabriel at Owl Feather Studio in Sedona at 928-204-1344 or send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
April 27 - Legend of the Rainbow Warriors - All-day intensive workshop and circle in the conference room at the Super 8 Motel in Sedona, AZ. All are welcome. By donation. For information call Kathie Gabriel at Owl Feather Studio in Sedona at 928-204-1344 or send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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× Contents © ‹ copyright January, 2002 by Steven McFadden ×
Chiron Communications
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Steven McFadden, Director
Chiron Communications
7 Avenida Vista Grande #195
Santa Fe, NM 87508 USA
http://www.chiron-communications.com
