Article:

Dancing With Katrina

By Sue Frederick,
author of Dancing at Your Desk

In August of 1969, my life was changed forever by Hurricane Camille. Our beloved Long Beach, Mississippi home (loved by four generations of Nolans) was washed from the earth by “storm surge.” Only the concrete foundations were left, with a few tattered dish towels waving in the breeze from the top of our ancient oak tree.

In my dreams, I still return to Long Beach for languid afternoons with my grandparents beneath that Water Oak, building forts in the sugar cane field with my cousins. In my dreams, we dig our toes into the toasty white beach sand, and slosh through the warm, shallow, salty gulf water that was our summer world. Our family never rebuilt the Long Beach house, and my father wept about it when he died 25 years later.

In August of 2005, the icons of my New Orleans childhood were also washed away; Katrina took my grandfather’s ferry boat landing on the Mississippi; my father’s and mother’s childhood homes in Algiers, and my own childhood home on Canal Boulevard - and left them twisted, looted, and unrecognizable. And Katrina violently re-destroyed Long Beach.

Again, relatives were lost and found, and some died from the chaos. Our family went into deep mourning once again. I fell into a black hole of despair for nearly a week…until I remembered the question. The only question that matters: “What’s next?” Or more importantly, “What do we want to happen next?”

I kept asking myself that question until I got some answers. I began to see the bigger picture, and I understood that human evolution on this planet is speeding up. I understood that we are being called to bring our darkness and negativity into the light to be healed. New Orleans and much of the southeast had wallowed in relentless poverty and crime for decades – and no one had seemed to notice. Now, everyone is noticing.

Now, impoverished families are being taken to new cities and offered opportunities that they never imagined possible. Families are being disassembled and reassembled in new configurations elsewhere. My mother’s 89-year-old sister was evacuated from a nursing home in New Orleans, taken to Baton Rouge, and then, miraculously and inexplicably, taken to Mobile, Alabama – only ten minutes away from my mother. Now, the two of them are reunited for the first time in years.

Consider these possibilities:

• New Orleans is being delivered from its dark political secrets, its shameless poverty, its flawed levee system, to be cleaned up and redesigned; modeled after Amsterdam where water levels are managed and embraced gracefully to create a unique and wondrous city.
• Your thoughts are sending vibrations to those hurricane survivors that will either help or hinder their progress in healing and rebuilding.
• Your thoughts are sending vibrations to government officials that will either help or hinder their attempts to find brilliant solutions to the overwhelming problems at hand.
• You are a powerful manifestor, and your thoughts and dreams about the devastated areas play a large role in their rebuilding.
• Even after donating time and money, your thoughts and dreams may be the most powerful tools you have to help those survivors rebuild their lives.

Ask yourself this:

How much time have you spent, complaining about the catastrophe – blaming government officials, blaming people who didn’t evacuate, or crying about the devastation?

Take the Katrina Dream Challenge:

I offer you a challenge – a sort of science experiment. Please join me in this effort. Every day at sunrise or sunset, take ten minutes to picture an amazing newly rebuilt city of New Orleans, and a re-developed southeast with economic opportunities much greater than casinos and tourist attractions.

• Picture hurricane survivors returning to their homelands and rebuilding better lives than before.
• Imagine the joy of a “new south” that becomes a powerful economic and social force in this country – providing massive opportunities for education and meaningful employment.
• Imagine medical research facilities, great universities and schools, aerospace research and development companies, and cutting edge technologies opening their offices in those now-devastated areas.
• Imagine scientific weather researchers discovering ways to redirect hurricanes and tsunamis and send them back out to sea before they wreak havoc on the land.
• Your thoughts are as powerful as your money. Send positive thoughts and dreams of a fabulous future - along with your money. Send powerful new ideas and images to replace the devastation. We need your thought-power to transform this tragedy.
• Stop blaming, worrying, crying and being outraged by the devastation, and start dreaming about what could make it better for everyone. I’m counting on all of you brilliant revolutionaries to join this revolution of the mind – this new vision. Together we can build a better reality for everyone, but only if we want it, dream it and believe it first.
  

Tomorrow at sunrise or sunset it begins with your ten minutes of focused thought on rebuilding the devastated areas. How powerful are our thoughts? Let’s find out.

 

Reprinted from Nexus: Colorado's Holistic Journal - www.nexuspub.com

 

Sue Frederick is a career counselor, energy coach, author and lecturer. She is the founder of BrilliantDay Revolution Network and teaches workshops and classes at Naropa University and University of Colorado, and is the author of Dancing at Your Desk; A Metaphysical Guide to Job Happiness and BrilliantDay: 7 Solutions to Turn Your Day Around. For more information, or to sign up for Sue's classes and workshops, visit www.BrilliantWork.com, email Sue@BrilliantWork.com or call 303-939-8574.

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