It is now nearly a year since the Valley Fire and as I write today the fire season has begun in earnest here in Lake County. After anxiously watching several small fires around the county flare up and be stopped over the past few weeks, the new Clayton Fire has been burning for three days now, (4,000 acres as of this morning) destroying much of the little town of Lower Lake, about 20 minutes from us.  The sickening familiarity of the "emergency drill" is now in full swing - the news conferences, the official emergency declaration, the marshaling of local help (setting up shelters, rallying church and local nonprofit service groups, the donation process) the County Supervisors and State Senator addressing the community, the compulsive monitoring of Facebook and Calfire websites.  The Lower Lake Methodist Church, where we have held several Town Meetings in the wake of last years fires, is gone, as are the offices of Habitat for Humanity. We are nervously waiting to hear from our dear friends at Dandelion Farm, which just barely escaped last year's fires and is now directly in the path of this new one. 

This new fire has already been attributed to arson (from the latin ardere to burn - as in ardor) with a suspect arrested yesterday. But across the state other, even larger fires are raging (the Soberanes Fire near Big Sur is now over 75,000 acres, with one fatality already and they say it may quadruple in size and burn for another month). Even if that turns out to have been caused by some accidental spark, or "natural" cause, it is still directly related to the massive earth system changes now underway caused by our continuing psychotic dissociation from the natural earth world that has left the ground here in California parched and primed to explode. Is that not arson also?

Early on the morning of Saturday March 19 2016 a great tropical Cyclone slammed into the Fijiian Islands, with winds up to 180mph, tearing a path of destruction through the island nation. Directly hit was the beautiful Hermitage Island of Naitauba, also known as Adi Da Samrajashram, spiritual center of the global community of practitioners of the Way of the Heart, given by the spiritual master Adi Da Samraj. For over 30 years the island of Naitauba has been a site of retreat and pilgrimage for a generation of practitioners that has poured its heart into cultivating a unique place on earth, building beautiful temples, meditation halls, gardens and retreat facilities. I have had the profound good fortune to be able to visit there several time on extended 4-6 week retreats, in 1990, 1995, 2008 and 2013. Each of these trips was a major gift of spiritual deepening and transformation in my life.