Tuesday evening, July 6, over 100 concerned people gathered to hear Dr. Riki Ott and Dr. J. Steven Picou. Dr. Riki Ott has played a pivotal role throughout the Exxon Valdez disaster and Dr. J. Steven Picou has had extensive onsite research experience with the Exxon Valdez disaster. They spoke of what has happened and is still happening in Alaska, how it relates to the gulf disaster, and what we can expect. “Maximum community disruption,” “post traumatic stress disorder,” massive “loss of community capital,” people seeking “escape” and “isolation,” “suicide,” “economic loss spirals,” communities that have gone “corrosive,” “friends who drink too much” because of the disaster, “divorce,” “corrosive families,” “holes in the ecosystem,” “desperation,” “persistent pollutants,” serious and widespread “health problems,” “reluctant resignation,” … They had our undivided attention.

Dr. Riki Ott. and Dr. J. Steven Picou exchanging notes before their presentation, photographed July 6, 2010 by Dawn McKinney

Part of the concerned audience behind me, photographed July 6, 2010

For me and surely most present it was much more than information overload. The emotional content was even more powerful. Even with the very academic approach, the tears from the audience began to flow especially from mothers worried about their children and the future.

Dr. Riki Ott and Dr. J. Steven Picou spoke of how we can change our future too. Move beyond the “warning,” “threat,” “impact,” “blame” cycle to the “mutual assistance,” “charitable action,” “commercial cooperation,” “entrepreneur leadership” cycle to leverage our own immense “experience” and “resources.” Use “collective common sense,” give “hugs not shrugs,” “maintain families,” “rise up,” “be leaders,” “choose … to live … and get control of the tiller,” “your power is from the community … the people … from the bottom up,” “speak as a community,” “have your cry, get through it, and make a plan.”

The following morning I sat up in bed and cried too. Sorrowfully I thought of our natural surroundings and our communities. I saw how we get distracted so easily and make ourselves nearly powerless by dividing ourselves with all kinds of respectable labels: liberal and conservative, rich and poor, this religion versus that religion or denomination, republican and democrat, … Sorrowfully I looked at our bubbles and walls, the illusions of success, comfort, … It’s quite strange how we seemed to need the Deepwater Horizons wake-up call to see the human and natural disasters around us and involving us.

So what’s the plan, the prayer, the dream, …? Listen to the calls within you to hold suffering people, to hold families together, to hold birds and fish too, … Despite all the bad news, together we have an incredibly positive future ahead of us, a future far better than our past. Let me share this prayer with you. I look at each line as springboard for conversing with God, our All in All, and as springboard for my actions and hopes for the day. Let the wind blow where it will.

You-Are-Who-Are, Infinite Lover of All, Eternal Creating Spirit!
Kumbaya to us, Your beloved children.
Live fully in each of us and be our All in All in each moment.

Inspire us to confidently ask for and seek all that we need
trusting day by day that Your abundant help can be found in many diverse places and persons.
Inspire us also to profoundly appreciate the needs, beauty, and gifts of each person.

Liberate us from every attachment, anger, dishonesty, conceit, and fear;
save us from every desire to do or return evil;
and guide us into Your boundless patience, hope, understanding, forgiveness, and love;
for we yearn and ask to be healed and to live fully like You and with You for the benefit of all.

Thank You, God.

[This prayer has been updated here.]