For some reason, everything I start thinking about today ends up back at Hiroshima...or Los Alamos...or White Sands...
I first saw the White Sands area in the seventies. When we planned the trip, I had a strong feeling that I wanted also to get as close as possible to the "Trinity Site" where the first atomic bomb was detonated. This was not out of a curiosity that had anything to do with history or politics, but more of a calling from the Earth to be there as witness -- to what, I did not know.
The day we blew that first bomb up, I wasn't even born yet, wasn't even in the oven, so to speak. But here's what I think: that blast had repercussions throughout our solar system. In whatever form we await the final explosion that ejects us from our mother's womb into physical expression in our Mother, Earth, we absorb the energy of whatever our relatives are creating. That energy, and all the information encoded therein -- for good or ill -- becomes part of us. It leaves a message. Depending on our soul's journey, we may be asked to reconnect with that information very specifically once we are embodied, and to work through it as part of our soul's liberation. It was that old message that was calling me to the Trinity site, I think.
I don't remember much of the landscape between Tularosa and Carrizozo along U.S. 54 that parallels the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. On that stretch I found myself connected very deeply -- not to the bomb, or the people or animals or plants that had lived or died through it, but to elements of the Earth itself -- to the atoms of Earth's body that endured the blast and still held the memory. The experience was so intense that I could not keep my eyes open and felt almost riveted in place with no desire to move.
There are few words with which to speak of this experience further, but I get a sense of it when I hear or read accounts of those scientists or soldiers who bore witness, or of those who somehow survived the detonations of "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" on August 6th and August 9th, 1945 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Every August for the past six years, I have found myself locking clearly back into my experience near the Trinity site though it happened more than 35 years ago. Each reconnection allows me, it seems, to hold more and more of the experience in a very strong and heart-centered way. I believe that the un-earthing of this experience for deeper work was facilitated by a young Japanese-American college student with whom I was attending a conference entitled Understanding Traumatized Societies at the University of Virginia. This was in November of 2003, just two years after 9/11 -- the memory and sting of that event was still fresh for most in attendance.
I don't remember his exact words, but he spoke in reference to Hiroshima and his belief that we in the United States have not come close to grasping the depth of the trauma suffered by so many in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a result of the bombs. In my heart I knew he was speaking a truth that very much resonated with my experience.
Today as I held this heart space again and imagined it wrapping itself around the ground of Hiroshima and all of the people who carry this memory as well, I made a very heart-mending connection through a powerful article and photograph of Setsuko Morita who, with her husband Noboru, were among the Hiroshima survivors:
The Moritas, explained Setsuko, are quiet people who married when they were 18 but "were never fortunate enough to have the blessing of children" – almost certainly as a result of injuries she suffered that day. They have come to London driven by the same urge which created the exhibition – to bear witness to what happened so that it will never happen again.
Setsuko Morita managed to stagger home after the bombing with 25% burns, through roads where every building was gone, crowded with people bearing terrible injuries, pleading for water. Her parents treated her for a week with three buckets of sterilised water and baby powder until they finally got her to a doctor. She overheard a conversation in which her mother said it would be better if she died, while her father argued that her life might still be worth living.
For whatever reason, the events in Hiroshima and Nagasaki two years before I was born have called me very personally to explore the notion of collective trauma and how we can transform it. It is significant to me -- and yet to be fully explored -- that the call came not from people but from nature.
At least one part of the message to me is clear: each of us is connected very intimately to every other life and structure on Earth, in this solar system, and as far beyond that as any of us can imagine. To harm one person -- or one element -- is to harm all. And once any one of us gets even a piece of this truth, we must speak it.
As an American citizen, I am so profoundly sorry for the suffering that was unleashed against Earth and the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the bombs from my country. Please forgive me.
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