In an article in the New Yorker, an authority in medicine gave the consumers of medical care a prognosis for the future of childbirth. The tone of the article leans toward the wonder of what modern medicine has accomplished, with a token tear shed for the loss of our humanity because of it. By burying the human experience under shovels of history and technique, the author minimizes the collateral damage being caused to the mother.

Atul Gawande assistant professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School said, in an article in The New Yorker Magazine (The Score: How childbirth went industrial.10/9/2006): 

"And yet there's something disquieting about the fact that childbirth is becoming so readily surgical. Some hospitals are already doing Caesarean sections in more than half of child deliveries...We are losing our connection to yet another natural process of life. And we are seeing the waning of the art of childbirth...In the medical mainstream, it will soon be lost."

There was a revolution in medicine during the first third of the 20^th Century that presaged all this. Whereas most urban women had been delivering babies at home with the help of a midwife, by about 1933 most urban babies were delivered by doctors in hospitals.

Yet, hospital care brought no advantages to the mothers or newborn. In fact, newborn deaths from birth injuries had increased over the preceding two decades! The author cites "incompetence" as the most consistent factor.

As the author observed, practitioners of medicine needed to do something to standardize the process of childbirth (make it easy as A-B-C!), and improve their numbers or they'd lose their credibility. Even without the advanced tools and techniques of the physicians, midwives were showing more consistently good results!

Caesarean section's place in this, at the time, was as a last-ditch emergency surgical procedure.  Historically, it almost always killed the mother through blood loss and infection. In the space of a quarter century, however, all that would really shift.

The turning point came in 1953 in the form of a standardized evaluation scale of the newborn called the Apgar score. At about the same time, surgical techniques and antisepsis were coming into their own. The score became a beacon upon which statistical studies could rely. The immediate health and longer-term prognosis of an infant became measurable, thus reflecting back to institutions and their practitioners the efficacy of their approaches and procedures.

But, if two procedures are equal in efficacy (when the personnel are adequately trained), how do you determine which to endorse, and at whose convenience?

Caesarean section is a procedure. The use of forceps in a delivery is a skill. Gawande refers to it as an art. Here lies a great example of where the path of least resistance is taking precedence over a push to raise the skill level of practitioners. Because of that, mothers may be suffering unnecessarily.

In the wake of statistics that endorse C-section as a viable option, studies of the longer-term impact on the women who are affected by it have been few and of little consequence to the direction that obstetrics is heading.

Gawande cites forceps as having completely revolutionized childbirth. Their use drastically reduced infant mortality. The problem with forceps is that too many doctors are unable to master the instruments and technique well enough to make it effective. Physicians who are well trained in the techniques, however, have success rates equal to Caesarean section in difficult births.

The Apgar score is newborn-oriented, which means that the goal is to produce live and healthy births. It is also designed to catch the endangered infant and medically intervene before it's too late. What it's not designed to do is to place equal emphasis on the health and future well being of the mother...and no one knows the cost.

Caesarean section is just the most indicative of the procedures that have been integrated into the typical delivery. Today, it is more routine than not to include IVs, fetal heart-monitoring, Pitocin (to "drive" contractions), and spinal block anesthesia in the procedure of childbirth. Many of these in the course of a delivery, are chosen to beat the odds and smooth out the rough edges; almost like saying, "We'll make this convenient for both of us today...and let's not talk about tomorrow." Of course, it's the mother and family that pays for this all, but in how many curriencies?

What once was the miracle of childbirth has become a technical procedure. It is dependent upon its distribution by an industrialized, assembly line, male-dominated hospital system that has yet to really understand, let alone acknowledge, the intricacies of a woman's experience. Has the woman's role become to deliver a healthy Apgar score?

Gawande says: "Against the score for a newborn child, the mother's pain and blood loss and length of recovery seem to count for little." Was he able to cite a study that shows the statistics for the women's experience? No, it is something that "seems" to count for little.

Caesareans are far more brutal to the mother than the use of forceps. Recovery is prolonged. Healthy tissue is damaged. The sense of dissociation from a natural birth process where you are delivering a newborn (as opposed to undergoing a procedure to remove a growth!) may very well produce traumatic beginnings in the bonding of mother and child.

Of course, that's only extrapolation on my part drawn from conversations with women who have undergone it. But what do I know; I have no statistics to back me up.

Maybe someone should ask.

I've been immersed in being a part of a phenomenon, and I need your help to spread the word.

Please check out http://www.mauistopthewar.com

Without the intent of being so, we turned into the biggest anti-war art protest in the United States since BEFORE the fall of Saddam Hussein! This was a spontaneous collective of artists who had pieces that were personal statements against this war, that war, those wars and for peace that were very unlikely to get venues because they were controversial.

The opening page will fill you in. What's even more exciting is that this showplace (community supported!) is now acting as a center for action on issues important to the local community - even beyond the war itself!

Here's one of my contributions to the show, which is a five-minute video tour of the gallery as I sing out to all rulers and leaders to "Stop Killing Our Children"   I've made it pretty clear I'm technologically challenged, so I'm calling on every Zaadster who reads this to help get the word out. Here's where a lot of us would like to see this go...

Starting here on Maui, we send some pieces from the show to a venue in, say California that gathers local artists for their statements. Then, some from us and some from them goes to the next venue, and on and on until a massive show is held, let's say, at the Jacob Javitts Convention Center in that little island on the other side of the world called Manhattan!

I happen to believe that Zaadsters will embrace what is going on here. Please help me get this info out here in the community so we can be another seed of change.

IMAGINE a country of artists uniting to give voice and provide space for us to work together against war!

Russell J.

a firetender

 

Feeling a bit vulnerable right now.

I'm painfully aware of how I've been struggling on the business end. You know, like the business-business end that makes it easy for people to both want and order the tools and art that I offer.

And there's been a part of me trying to sucker people in to help me move forward as the mouthpiece for my work while I immerse myself in the articulation of it all. Apparently, I'm adamant about not tending to the nuts and bolts. I know that's what this operation needs, assuming, of course, I don't want to become homeless.

I once was Implementer, the guy who facilitated the business realization of the other guys' dreams. So now, since I'm seeking Implementers of my own, I have to look at my own dreams, and do a little check-in to see where I'm going.

If I get the right kind of attention drawn to what I'm doing, I will attract allies, the whole Law of Attraction thing. I realize what I'm doing is building, as best I can, a vision of this concept called firetender and hoping it will be attractive enough to draw people in who have the talents to make it a viable, worthwhile entity, for all our benefit.

This chronical.whatevernumber is all about me sharing my process. It is self-centered, a touch arrogant, and, at this point, I'm not all that convinced it will do anything but make me seem like the lazy manipulative jerk I am. So, what is it I'm really selling here?

This blog is an exercise in transparency, which I aspire to model. My articles at http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Russ_Reina and my art at http://www.thestoryofthis.net/ for example, are about the work. In that, my most important role is to get out of the way. For some dopey reason I have the notion that these things are gifts for you.

I'm imagining right now that what I'm doing here takes hold. That the things I'm doing are actually foundational to the future of the work; that I'm not just pulling my pud here. I'm imagining that some talented and savvy people will tune in to what I'm doing, and knowing that one of their highest aspirations can be expressed through business, they will provide the support necessary to help get This work out there to do The work.

That statement came naturally, and I'm glad it did. My vision for myself is about doing the work, not talking about Russ. As this firetender and Healing Arts Central thing gets a foothold (Note to Self: Speak as if it's already happened!), I refuse to let it be about how this firetender guy built a successful enterprise through working Zaadz. I'm failing the mission if that's its core.

The firetender's role, in working with the sacred fires of the Inipi (sweat lodge), is to relate to the fire moment to moment; to work with exactly what is so that it does the work that it's supposed to do. The fire protects and warms the Grandfather stones, as they get ready to speak to the people in the lodge. But, it's not about the firetender, nor is it about the fire, nor is it about the Grandfather stones or the person who pours water on them. It's not even about the people in the lodge. It is all about those forces working together so "all our relations" may live in health and happiness.

This is the challenge of the work of the firetender; to facilitate while staying out of the way; to keep on point while seeking the greater good.

I have to laugh at the Walter Mittyness of this whole thing!  In this moment, just to give you an idea of where I'm at, I'm fantasizing about being on the Conan O'Brien Show.

CONAN: So you were basically eating cat food, living on Maui ... (to audience) Sure, firetender, suffering mightily, living on Maui...and then you found this Zaadz site. How did you convince them to build this huge, Capitalistic, New-Age Airy-Fairy money-making enterprise behind you?

RUSS, a firetender: That's kinda cool, how you arch your eyebrows just before you think you have someone nailed. Do you practice that? Is that what you have to do to give us what we want? I'm really curious about how you create yourself for us. How can we learn from your journey?

That's the work. Although I'd hope I'd be a little less New-Agey with the wording.

 

I've been scraping around this life in the firm belief that whatever I was creating at the time was "the shit!" and it would only be a matter of days before the world would recognize how cool it, and I was, and open up its stores of riches to me.

I am a Hope Fiend. This has sustained me through years of trial and error in an incredibly diverse life. I've always known somehow, sometime soon, someone would recognize me and the work I'm doing as valuable. Any minute now!

The payoff has never been about money. It's been about being seen for who I am, appreciated for it, and being acknowledged for my unique contribution to life. In a nutshell, it's about my need to be loved.

It's an infantile thing that stems back to the fact that in my family structure/dysfunction, I was the Invisible Child who became the Black Sheep of the family. So for all practical purposes, reliance on hope amidst invisibility has been my hallmark for 55 years.

It's not been all that bad a combo, actually. I've been under everybody's radar and free to explore wherever I want and risk whatever I have without the fear of losing anything but my life.

One compounding factor has been, due to feeling unsupported in anything I did; I rejected the dominant values around me and insisted on finding my own way to do everything. So even those people who could see me, didn't get it!

My Acting and Stand-up Comedy Teachers each ended up saying they didn't know how to work with me anymore because they couldn't figure out what I was doing. To their credit, they each gave me a stage to work through my process. As you know, I am both a World Famous Actor and Comic today because of this!

Kidding aside, what has happened is everything I learned through them and everything else I've learned but never got acknowledged for turned into tools I can use for healing. I didn't know that at the time because I thought I was going to be an Actor, or a Comic, or a Whatever.

Wrestling with invisibility I've had to try all sorts of stuff. I've had to pick up things that others have discarded and learn how to use them in novel ways in the hopes that "That one" would be the one that makes the grade.

None of them, individually in their specific fields, did. I'm talking of 55 years worth of creations big and small, none of them struck a chord with enough people so that I became distinguished in any one phase of my life.

Strangely enough, I am neither complaining nor lamenting. In fact, I'm braying about how, in the last couple years I've realized what it's all been for. Not only that, but I'm telling you that with the tools I have gathered in my lifetime, I don't have to do one more thing, create one more approach, take one more picture or write one more word and I'll be perfectly content to live out my life exactly as it unfolds, moment to moment, using what I have.

After so many years of trying to distinguish myself as something, I've quit fighting and decided to just stand here and be me.

I'm exclaiming that my trip has been fascinating and when I look back, I have never wanted for anything for very long. As long as I kept finding ways to contribute, whatever I've needed has been there. That includes love, but only because I've learned that love looks the way love looks, not the way I want it to look.

I am living the manifestation I envision. Here I am doing nothing more than what I usually do which is all about communicating, but I'm creating a world that has a place for me in it as I do so.

Zaadz? I don't know where the hell that came from, but it appeared just at the time when I needed it. Had I become aware of it one year ago, I would not have been ready to use it.

But, really, none of that matters. Why? Because what I'm presenting here at Zaadz is "the shit!" and it will only be a matter of days before the world recognizes how cool it, and I am, and opens up its stores of riches to me!

 

My strongest suit, in terms of supporting all aspects of my life, is my writing. The internet provides me the vehicle to work out a lot of the details of the new territory I'm exploring, and now, I'm seeing how it can help me gather allies to bring forth my work.

In this blog, my intent is to share my experiences here at Zaadz as I manifest people to help me get my work out there. In this process, I will examine as best possible the ways I have been and am blocking my ability to be effective. I'll also share my experience of how what Zaadz has created fulfills its mission by helping me get over my self-imposed barriers.

A big part of my challenge has been I've been slack at getting myself out there talking about myself and what I do long enough to convince someone that they might need what I have to offer.  I've come to the conclusion that my first problem marketing me is I know too much about who I am.

I look at myself - and I know a hell of a lot more about me than you do - and say, "I wouldn't follow that guy as a healer." So I've got no juice for representing myself to people who might follow me and make me rich. Maybe a deeper truth is I don't follow anyone and think maybe you shouldn't either, but what does that mean?

Here I am, building a case for you that I can't market me because I really don't meet the standards of what I think you think a healer is. It's all so much bullshit! In the final analysis, it's all about the work, of which I'm only the vehicle.

Full-disclosure: This is all a semi-slick ploy to get people to take responsibility to do what I am too lazy to do myself. On another level, this is all about knowing that I can't be all I'm designed to be without your help.

If you want me to talk about the work in person, I can go on for days. If you want me to talk about me, in person, I may start out rolling, but after a few short minutes, if I don't get bored to tears, I certainly lose steam and I've lost you. This is no good for marketing what you offer. (Paradoxically, sit me in front of a keyboard like this and you can't shut me up about my process!)

So basically, I've come here to Zaadz to find people who will talk about the work I do to others, for me, so that something actually happens with it that will support me as I do the work they're talking about.

Maybe a major thing that I keep stumbling on is that I'm having an increasingly more difficult time thinking in terms of "Ownership" of anything I offer. That may play a part in my financial situation.

When I speak of myself as a spiritual counselor, for example, I credit whatever wisdom I may have gathered as a direct extension of the incredibly varied textures of pain that I experienced as a child. I know the stuff that lives inside you because it is still living inside me somewhere; that whole resonance thing.

I'm sorry, but I've never gotten it in my head that before I can recognize and relate to your pain, we need to figure out a financial arrangement; before I can offer you an image that will soothe you, I need the check in hand; or before I can tell you as a healer you're gonna have to face your own shadow over and over I'll need you to sign up for the newsletter so I can sell you some art. In my cosmology, those "befores" are unnatural acts against my nature.

All of my pain, all of my experience, all of the routes I've taken to figure it out, all the words and art I've produced to articulate the territory so you don't have to is sacred stuff that is a part of my moment-to-moment being. It is there, period, and will not wait for the lure of money before it comes out.

Yet, I believe to attain the reach my work deserves and in order to preserve my ability to give what I can without dying of exhaustion, someone needs to do this. And I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't accept someone else doing the "befores" for me.

 

From Jump Street, I'd like to make it clear that I know exactly what I'm doing.

I've had enough incredible moments with enough people to have a basic understanding about life, especially in terms of healing. I will make it immediate in this way: I needed Zaadz so much that I created it, and Zaadz needed me so much, it created me.

This is my operational approach to being a healer. I am not the one who heals, nor am I the witness. My job is to help open the door so we can enter the sacred room of healing together. It's a mutual gig.

In this case, Zaadz revealed just how pitifully inadequate is the business of this guy calling himself firetender. And it is a business; just no one is tending its fires. The guy who's supposed to be running it may be so pathologically addicted to articulating, he's missing what it takes to produce returns that will allow him to find an audience that can hear and use what he's articulating!

In truth, firetender is drowning in a sea of his own creation. Zaadz is reflecting this back to him, and throwing him a life-preserver by introducing him to others who may have been treading the same waters and found a way out through building connections. This firetender is turning to Zaadz for healing so he can move forward so what he has to offer can be put to use.

And what's the healing for Zaadz? For Zaadz to realize itself, it must fulfill its purpose of changing the world. It needs agents to do that. In this agent it has found someone willing to share his experience of how Zaadz is working as a vehicle of manifestation, right now.

Both Zaadz and I know that I am not going to be the one to change the world and neither is Zaadz. We're an expression of the same longing that lives and breathes on this planet. We absolutely need each other to fulfill our missions.

In the last few years, especially obvious since I've been in Hawaii, I've found myself in situations where a chance encounter with someone in critical need reveals to me the importance of my life. There I am, just dealing with what is with the person and something comes out of me; a word, an experience, a gesture, a touch, or idea that acts like a key that perfectly fits the lock that has been preventing that person from taking the next step in their lives.

And I'm, like, "Wow! Where did that come from?" because I did not consciously determine that that's what the person needed. Some obscure part of my life's experience came out at a specific time to do its work.

It's then that I realize that the person needed that moment from me so much that, by some miracle of connection, she gifted me a whole lifetime to get what I needed to bring that moment to her. To be a part of that miracle is my juice. I call out to Zaadz to help me get more people like her to me, so I can fulfill my role.

So Zaadz, for me, is an exercise in manifestation. There are a whole lot of you in this network who have what I don't. You have juice for things that I'd just as soon slit my wrists rather than do. You, like myself, have been searching your whole lives to find the parts of you that can make the rest of you come to full fruition.

I am that part for you. You are that part for me. Let's get to work!

 

I'm inviting you in to the unfolding of a story that takes place in Hawaii. It's about meeting Madame Pele. Not in the sense of encountering her, but in the sense of being up to both her challenges and rewards.

Something like 80% of the people who move to the Hawaiian Islands move back to whence they came or elsewhere within a couple years. It is common lore here (though how can you call the truth "lore"?) that Malahini - newcomers - go through a metaphoric trial by fire. Once they step foot on the islands their world is turned upside-down until such time as they are either chewed up and spit out, or embraced, by Pele, the Goddess of Fire herself.

It's personal. It's got to be because in this hall of mirrors the changes you are asked to go through are custom-designed to correspond with the weakest and strongest parts of you, and you alone. Everything you are gets reflected back to you. Sometimes with just enough of a touch of distortion to scare the crap out of you because you discover it's not distortion, it really is you!

No two people seem to go through the same things. Sure, the economic reality is a huge adjustment here. There's a Third-world quality to the place that places poverty side-by-side with riches. Politically, the cronyism, speed of the machine, uneven class-related law enforcement, and economic ties to controlling interests reminds me more of the mechanics of the Deep South back in the 1970's than what you find on the Mainland today. But all that is just colorful background for the real struggle of you against yourself.

That having been said, let me fast-forward and summarize my last three years here: I have been in a world of wonder where door after door has opened for me, showing me a view of Paradise with me in it, and then finding the whole scene dissolves into mist as that door closes in my face.

It has been a pattern of seduction, vision, and not defeat, but a back-to-the-drawing-board beckoning. If you're not willing to start from scratch, over and over, you're outta here. The key to making it on these Islands is surrender. For by surrendering to what is, and not resisting the process of constant re-definition, you, in some mysterious way, allow Pele to embrace you. And then, when you least expect it, she showers you with gifts of incredible proportions.

It's not that you must suffer to receive those gifts. It's that you must make yourself worthy of their bounty.

So, for me, the key has been to give back as much as I can. This, especially in this economy, is the healer's weakness: with the obligation to share the gifts that have been freely-given comes the challenge to survive long enough to give more.

To bring this back to the now, here is the situation within which I find myself. My experience in Hawaii is that I've had to re-define my understanding of myself as a healer three or four times. Each new view of myself has come from having been gifted a new tool to work with designed to considerably increase my reach as a healer. In the exploration of these tools, I have been working out their uses by giving them away. In the process, however, I've gotten so far away from making them work for me economically that I've almost buried myself.

"Almost" is what I'm left with and thanks to Madame Pele, and I hope, my peers in Zaadz, I'll be able to apply a new state of surrender to this situation, learn to recognize and accept the gifts I'm meant to both gain and give, and pull out of the ditch and into a world that is ready for them. In the process, I'm enlisting you to take part in the journey.

This, then, begins a chronicle of discovery where I learn how to ask for help so I can be the firetender I claim to be, so I can tend fires that will contribute to all our lives.

 

The island of Maui, Hawaii - one of the most remote landmasses in the world -- consistently is rated the #1 tourist destination by many major travel guides, in some for as many as ten years running.

Maui is pure magic. Some people arrive and almost become immobile with wonder, then return home using terms like synchronicity and serendipity. Those of us who live here, where such things are commonplace, simply say, "Oh, you got Maui-d!" You've heard of the Sea of the Unconscious? Well, look at a globe and see where Maui floats.

This is not a pretty Maui story. Whereas cell phones play a central role, they are merely symptoms. But, like Kaposi's sarcoma is an agent of the rapidly accelerating destructiveness of A.I.D.s, cell phones are ominous signs of a greater disease as well.

People from all over the world are familiar with a certain beach on Maui. I'm reluctant to name it because I, like so many new, arrogant residents, don't want a whole lot of people showing up after me and ruining things. For now, let's call it the Beach.

It is adjacent to a larger and more tourist-oriented shore. To get to it you have to climb over an ancient lava-flow. Most residents balk at the climb and never experience what lies on the other side. Those who do make the effort, however, find themselves in an incredible world.

The beauty of the place is beyond question. A lava-rimmed cove embraces perfect body-boarding waves that lap up on a white sand beach sheltered by a mesquite (kiawe)-lined hill that looks down into a natural bowl. On Sundays, that site becomes one of the most entertaining and fulfilling multi-ringed circuses in the world.

Back sometime in the 1960's, locals and visitors began an informal and organic ritual. Each Sunday afternoon, island residents, their guests, and a variable amount of tourists clamber up and over the rise to enter this zone of freedom of expression.

A drumming circle there anticipates, greets and bids farewell to sunset and hello to the night. The backbeat of as many as fifty drums of all orientations (the rhythms and sounds of African drums and drumming predominate), echo to the four directions. They provide a unifying rhythm for a conglomeration of adults and children who come to what is arguably the most famous clothing-optional beach in the world

About ten years ago, a new element entered the mix; fire. Since then, firedancers, both male and female, from Maui and all over the world, at all levels of experience and representing all age ranges have come there to share. As the sun dips into the Pacific, fire arises on land. Here, it is offered not as a buffer against the night, but as celebration of its mystery, all within the context of community.

There are as many reasons to be there as there are people that show up. It is a regular, no-fee event that embraces dancers, bubble-blowers, musicians, hula-hoopers, acrobats, twirlers, surfers, swimmers, meditators, proselytizers, singers and a steady flow of whom could be called "surprisers".

Whether participants see themselves as performers, entertainers, healers, poets, priests or priestesses, artists, technicians, practitioners, clowns, teachers, or even observers, they offer themselves with focused intent. It is the power of that collective intent to be part of a "scene" that embraces many in a positive way (no matter how each person defines it) that has made the Beach the sacred haven it is.

I missed less than ten Sundays there from late 2004 to August of 2006. It is a weekly sojourn that allows me to recharge my intent to be a vehicle of healing through drumming, music and dance. As a photographer, I've been documenting the spirit within the gathering. Within the context of the healing arts I've been taught things there that have potent applications in the work I do with others.

Behind my viewfinder, however, I've noticed a shift that has turned a beautiful spot into a harbinger of scary things to come. Its agents, whether they know it or not, whether they want to be or not, are the users of cell phones.

Once, I could take photographs without concern of having another photographer in the image. The people with cameras were few, aware, and cooperative enough to make adjustments to each other and the revelers. But then, almost abruptly, something shifted. Some time just before the beginning of 2006, people were able to receive and transmit signals on the Beach.

I began to become mildly annoyed at how difficult it was to get a sunset or firedancing shot without getting the telltale glow of a red or blue cellphone screen on the image from someone taking shots and blasting them to friends in the Great Wherever. At the risk of sounding prejudiced, the trend was most evident within the group we call tourists. More and more people on the Beach were spending more and more time being somewhere else through their cell phones.

Tourists are central to the financial health and well being of the Hawaiian Islands. Their safety, not to mention good will (in hopes of return visits), is a legitimate concern of the local government and Maui's residents. The vast majority of the regulars on-site respect them. Tourists are often invited to participate more fully by regulars. Many are freely offered healing sessions. 

Still, in many ways the Beach does appear to be an accident waiting to happen. The climb over the lava-flow, which sometimes is accompanied by a high tide line that reaches the outcropping's base, can be harrowing, especially the return trip in darkness.

Any concentration of revelers can draw alcohol and drug abuse leading to bad behavior. The handling of fire, anywhere, at any time, holds dangerous potential. Add to this the presence of children and inexperienced and vulnerable teenagers, nudity and maze-like woods and the blind power and indifference of the ocean itself, and you get the picture.

Yet, in the many weeks of my participation, I was very impressed with how consistently hard the regulars work to assure a high level of security and safety for everyone.

Passage over the lava flow is taken seriously. Helping hands are always available. At night, they hold torches and flashlights. Firedancers are constantly monitoring the perimeter of the fire circle, as well as the relative experience and awareness of new dancers. Many of them have been doing this - some professionally - for ten or more years and are a consistent presence.

Rowdy abusers, if threatening at all, are often encircled by a number of regulars, tightening a loving noose around them until they can be confined and escorted back over the lava flow to the parking lot. The beach is usually left cleaner than when the gathering began. Injuries and incidents on-site are stabilized and emergency services called only as a last resort. When they do arrive, their personnel are respected and helped.

Here, on Sundays, there has been an unorganized community that has gathered and consciously made much effort to look out after its own. All in all, this temporary, self-sustaining community has worked for the last forty years because the attendees have been personally involved with each other.

But, a few months ago I began to notice a more frequent presence of Maui Police and Dept. of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) personnel on the Beach. What I observed was someone would get rowdy, a tourist would get scared, and rather than allow the regulars to regulate in their own time, in their own way, would pick up their cell-phone and call 9-1-1.

The final weekend of July, 2006, at about 8:15 P.M. as everyone was filing out to the parking lot after an uneventful but fulfilling night of celebration, 9-1-1 was notified that someone had been beaten up and their backpack stolen. By the time the Maui Police Department got to the scene, there was hardly anyone on the beach, let alone victim and perpetrator (locals). The incident had been handled.

The next week, signs were put up notifying beach-goers that the DLNR was closing down that particular State Park at 6:00 P.M. "Safety concerns" were cited.

To be perfectly honest, as an ex-paramedic, I know that there's nothing more frustrating than being called to the scene of a reported emergency - often risking life, limb and peace of mind enroute - to find the call was bogus. The Maui Police Department is understaffed. These are not minor considerations. From their point-of-view, I have no issue with their reasoning.

The crux of the matter, however, thanks to modern technology, is it has become easier to involve the authorities than it is to take the time and personal responsibility -- within the context of community -- to work things out. This is where cell-phones are accelerating our loss of connection under the illusion that they provide more opportunities to connect.

The next week, after an uproar, the DLNR modified the closure to occur slightly after sunset. Each week since, the DLNR has been a stronger presence. The drumming has been limited because many regulars work on Sunday to survive economically on Maui and only have the evenings to participate. As for the firedancers? You can count them on one hand now, and measure their impact in minutes where the healing arc of the spectacle once lasted for hours. By no means does it feel like a Police State, but something important has been lost.

The continuity of community at the Beach has been dealt a severe blow. Whether or not it is fatal is yet to be determined. There are protests going on and lawyers working on it, but, in this report, it's not the situation, per se, it's all about its implications. Yes, I can blame cell-phones, but we all know that's not the central issue. The issue is the way we use the powers of technology and instant communication to distance ourselves from our immediate experience.

I have watched the cancer of the institution spread slowly but insidiously over the last fifty-five years. People once had to rely on each other within the context of hands-on, personal relationships. That is not so much the case any more. Nobody gets dirty except the care-taking professionals, and they bear an undue burden for the rest of us. Everyone suffers alone.

Medicine dictates what is done with our bodies. Law determines how we relate to others. Our police enforce policies that place undue burden on those of color and poverty. Our government decides whom we should fear and who is sent as cannon fodder to foreign lands. Corporations determine who makes out like a bandit and who pays. The extended family has turned into the nuclear family, which has even lost the glue that once held it together. (Whatever did happen to regular sit-down family meals, anyway? And how many cellphones are at your kitchen table?)

It's getting far too difficult to notice how the simple, life-affirming skills of interpersonal connection are taking an accelerated back seat to technology while we're figuring out how to get the cellphone to remind us, find us, prime us, protect us, detect us, capture our images, store our information, tell us where to go, what to buy and who to listen to.

Cellphones connect us to the illusion of connection. They also link us to a system that can easily make sure that we are doing what we're supposed to be doing, when and where we're supposed to be doing it, and how Big Brother wants it all to be done.

It's only a matter of time.

Things are moving so fast in our drunken love affair with the damned things, it won't be long before we awaken to find we've allowed rapists into our beds.

About twenty years ago, after leaving a 12-year career in emergency medicine, jokingly I began stating, "Anything I learned, I learned in the back of an ambulance." What once was almost a flippant comment has actually become a touchstone for my life. When it's time to look at the real things I have learned, I start there.

I entered emergency medicine at a time when there was no such specialty. To "attend" to an ill or injured patient in the back of an ambulance you were only required to have taken an eight-hour Red Cross course in basic first aid. Within about three years, due to technological advances in telemetry from the space program and wireless communication from the war in Vietnam, there was a flood of paramedics in ambulance services across the country. Most of us were ill equipped to deal with the spiritual challenges we were asked to deal with.

Spiritual challenges? Galore!

The culture of the paramedic, even today, does not allow or support much introspection, let alone public expression of the exploration. Based on the Military/Cop model, the guiding principle still seems to be, "If you get personally involved, you cannot do your job."

For some, like myself, that was not an option. How could I possibly remove myself from the spiritual challenge of entering someone's life close to their moment of death, witnessing their passing (sometimes, sadly enough, contributing to it!), and then, after a couple of well-timed, purely mechanical interventions, orchestrate their re-animation?

Perhaps this little story might provide some insight.

A fireman died. He found himself standing on a long, long line outside the Pearly Gates. Way up ahead was St. Peter, letting some from the line in, and casting others aside. The line was moving slowly.

The fireman noticed that this guy, in uniform and with a stethoscope around his neck and carrying a drug box and defibrillator in his hands, broke ranks and, briskly striding alongside of the still line, walked right up to the gates and passed through them as St. Peter nodded his okay.

The firemen thought to himself, "Hell, I'm an Emergency Medical Technician!" He broke out of the line and walked up to St. Peter, who stopped him at the gate. "Wait a minute," said the fireman, "I'm an EMT. I saw you let that paramedic in, why are you stopping me?"

St. Peter, barely looking up from his Book of Life said, "Oh, him? That's God, he just thinks he's a paramedic!"

This illustrates a bit of the wonder, and what I feel is perhaps the heart of spirituality: We are God/not God at one and the same time. The Art element is learning how to experience that territory without getting hung up on either of its parts. The challenge is to live with that paradox.

The above joke is not necessarily a joke. If you look at the faces of God in literature, or sacred works, you can clearly see that even "the Boss" is grappling with the same dilemma. Sometimes s/he acts like a Divine Being, very much above it all. At other times? Well, the Bible identifies one of the plagues rained down on Egypt, during the time that Moses was begging Pharaoh to "let my people go!" as being "emerods." That's another word for hemorrhoids. Only something with very human characteristics would be devious enough to use that as an object lesson!

I know that before I was here to perceive it, there was nothing. At least from the point of view of the me that is right now. Until the concept was shared with me (actually instilled in me), for all intents and purposes, there was no God. The whole God thing came from "out there" but could not be real unless it lived inside me.

My impression of God is, largely, a by-product of my culture. The God that I've found living in me, however, trumps anything I've been taught about it. As I learn more about me, I'm learning more about God. I suspect the same is true of God.

My life has been a lesson in limitations. As I've grown older I've learned the degree to which I accept my limitations determines the degree to which I find I'm unlimited. My intent truly manifests; I do create!

I know that to be the truth from the miserable things I've brought in to my life. I've appeared to be much more adept at the negative than the positive, yet, seeing how clearly that works in retrospect, I'm just learning that, indeed, in every moment I am creating myself and the world around me.

In the back of an ambulance, I learned just how human I am. Metaphorically, I've played Tug-of-War with God, many times, and even with many different Gods! Sometimes, I've won. Does that make me God by conquest? To be frank, sometimes it sure felt like it. Of course, that's a translation based on very human terms.

But, ultimately, it's not about "being" God, or "being" human. The heart of Spirituality is also the art of spirituality; navigating the territory where we, the created, are the creators.

Not terribly long ago, I came to the conclusion that my life's work stands for the healing arts wherever they are found. The amusing thing about the concept was that I found them everywhere!

That's when I realized that all of the individual paths that I had thought I had been on in my life were just one big Superhighway designed to exercise, channel and direct my powers as an articulator of my experience in the healing arts. I just happened to be bouncing from guardrail to guardrail, across and under lanes and back again, moving forward, and by the grace of the Gods, not hitting anything substantial.

It was not my choice to see everything as a reflection of healing, rather, it was my obligation to communicate what I saw. The metaphor I kept coming back to was my experience on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation (SD) as firetender for sacred ceremonies. That's the person who works with the elements he or she is given to prepare, maintain, and energize a sacred space for others to experience the deepest part of themselves, in connection with all their relations. What good was anything I witnessed unless it was applied to help others?

My life had presented me with an enormous number of gifts that could be employed to help others experience themselves in new ways. Most of them were from the most potent lesson of all; learning how to change my personal pain into power. If there was a thread that connects all my personal themes like cable, it would have to be I have been gifted many stories to tell.

It took me a long time to figure out that it is all one story, the story of a firetender. You see, every time I chose one story to communicate, and one approach to the telling, I felt obligated to become that type of storyteller. I spent blocks of years writing a screenplay and eventually getting it produced as a movie, trying to be a screenwriter; years on stage trying to be a stand-up comic; years studying acting trying to be an actor; years writing and marketing a book trying to be an author; years on stage again trying to be a singer-songwriter; years again trying to be a photographic visual artist... get the picture?

I am none of these because I am all of them. Every time I focused in one area, and got reasonably proficient at it, another arena would beckon me to it and I simply had to see how I could communicate the wonders of the healing arts in that medium. Oftentimes, a new story to be told required a different medium for the telling.

The end result was that I had become so vast I could not fit myself into a box convenient enough to carry into the marketplace. I certainly had no idea how to carry myself in it!

Every foray into trying to "establish myself" or distinguish myself in one or other of those forms failed. The drive had to be all about the exploration then, didn't it? With each door slamming in my face, I learned better to take a step around the house and look for another door opening rather than pounding on the closed door to get it to open again. So I found myself stepping into a tremendous variety of rooms in the process.

In each room I found a new fire that I had to learn to work with.

After about twenty years of doing this, even I got to recognize the pattern. Success or failure was not part of the equation. All that was important was that I was building a body of useful work. It was not up to me to decide its best application. In fact, from where I sit today, the failures were amongst the most potent teachers. "It will all find its place," I reassured myself night after night.

I won't kid you about the agonizing months of despair. Picture yourself working for nine years on getting a movie you had written made. Its world premiere was as the opening night film of the 1994 Santa Barbara International Film Festival, complete with klieg lights, studio moguls, limos, and soon-to-be-dead along with up-and-coming movie stars. Incredibly enough that accidentally happened because of the Northridge earthquake, but that, too, is another story that only led to the movie's death the very night of its birth!

This character called firetender is more of an aspiration than a realization. It's a guiding spirit, if you will. This firetender is not the kind of healer people think of when one claims himself a Healer with a capital "H". He's kind of lacking in bells and whistles and fancy technological instruments and drugs, and his rap is a little on the raw side. He is, however, the type of healer that can touch most anyone. "Healing," he says, "is no big deal. We do it all the time. We just don't do it enough!"

This firetender guy began exploring the flames of spirit called "healing" when he was eighteen years old. He kept learning more and more about the different textures and manifestations of the fire, until, in his 55th year of life he found himself at the center of a warehouse full of different shapes and sizes of wicks and of burning materials and of holders.

He also had a body full of sacred scars from getting burned from the flames, but with them came some knowledge anyhow, of how to teach others to safely work with them.

Standing amidst the tools of his life, he knew the time had come to distribute the bounty of their applications to the people. He also knew that there were many more people seeking the light that he offered than he could find on his own. Of course, if it had to be, it was enough to be available to help the stray wanderer that landed on his doorstep. Still, there were so many more people to reach out to.

He had come to the conclusion that he wasn't the one to do the reaching. At his best, he could keep the inventory of tools up, produce different varieties to share and different ways to share them. What he could do was be the one to deliver the goods and begin teaching the recipients how to use them for the benefit of themselves so that they, in turn, could offer their light to others.

That, this firetender knew, was enough.