Okay, so Ann and I don't as a general practice watch a lot of news on TV, especially not in the morning and especially not on Monday…except for some reason Ann turned it on this morning as I was stretching out my back and I caught some of the news on CNN about the 5,000 barrels/day of crude oil that continues to spill into the Gulf and is polluting the coastline.

And they still haven't figured out how to stop it.  Last efforts over the weekend to put a massive 'balloon' type apparatus over the leak to collect it failed.

So, I watched a few more minutes of the depressing news about the health hazard to the folks that will be cleaning up the mess and how many folks are still have health problems from the Valdez in 1989, and then went on my purpose practice morning walk, knowing I was off.

I checked in with myself to see what was up — what was going on in my inner landscape and I was immediately hit with a wave of remorse and sadness. 5,000 barrels of oil PER DAY, and it's been well over a week that this has been going on.  Let's see, aren't those barrels about 50 -55 gallons, like the one I have on my deck that I plan to use to collect rain water?  That size. That would mean 25,000 gallons of crude is flowing out of Mother Earth and polluting the waters and coastlines. 

How can this be?  How can I hold this assault on our planet that we've done to ourselves?

I'm still 'pondering' upon this, and probably have much more work to do with it. So far, this is all that I've come up with.

"All is in Divine Order' — one of my 'favorite' affirmations. The full sentence has grown to be, "All is in Divine Order even when, and especially when it doesn't appear to be."  Well, for sure this is one of those times this does not look to be in 'Divine Order.'  So, how is it?

Well, maybe, just maybe this is the wake-up call we've been needing to once and for all get serious about moving away…way away from the continual use of fossil-fuels for our primary energy source.  Oh, I'm not so naive to think we can stop 'cold turkey' but we sure as hell can move with a much higher intention and commitment than we have.

It's time to go beyond 'politically correct' lip service and get serious about this.  We can be incredibly ingenious and creative when we need to be.  "Necessity IS the mother of invention" and it's really necessary for us to make a move on this…cause we're killing ourselves and our planet by continuing to ignore the situation. 

And we can start by stopping oil drilling off our coasts.  Surely, this environmental disaster which is bound to go down in history as one of the all time great calamities is enough of a wake-up call for us to take this lesson to heart.  And that's my 'ranting on (& off) purpose' for today.