Out of the floods……

Well everyone, what a start to 2011 with floods inundating 75% of Queensland, leaving destruction and despair in their wake, Northern NSW towns under water and now many rural areas in Victoria under threat. The clean-up will involve not just the physical but also the emotional and indeed spiritual, so we send our heartfelt support and loving energy towards the affected communities.

While the events have been shocking in terms of their scale and their raw power, I think that there has also come out of this a great deal that is positive and good. We have the renewed sense of community; the volunteering especially of young people; the wonderful act of helping a complete stranger in need; the resilience and the compassion.

Trevor Gollagher, a spiritual healer and author from Queensland who has been out doing his bit around Brisbane comments in his newsletter that, “Major negative events are a way of creating mass consciousness shifts.  Another aspect of these man-made and environmental shifts is to allow us all to be more of service to the whole of which we are a part.”

The question is can we keep it going or will the urge to engage with the community recede with the muddy flood waters? I believe not for I think that many people today are searching, yearning even, for that sense of connection and belonging. The challenge for those of us unaffected by the tragedy of the floods is to actively seek to establish that sort of connection without waiting for a disaster of such magnitude to prompt us.