It’s approaching that time of year when we let the fire burning in our outdoor wood furnace go out. The ground has thawed and new plants are emerging each day around the property. The temperatures at night are hovering around freezing.
The furnace fire began burning in October. Every morning and every evening since it was lit, it has been necessary to go out and add a few logs (more than a few on the coldest nights) to keep heat supplied to our home and studio. Truth is, I’ll miss the routine when the embers die out.
One of our goals living in this tiny corner of the world we call home is to develop space for the sacred within the domestic. Tending the fire is one of the rituals that aids this.
One of the questions that emerges for me: how else have automated systems removed perhaps unnoticed value from the homestead?
St. Louis in Flood via flicker
While Washington recedes into it’s back rooms, Mother Nature has taken center stage. The week began with an awakened Mt. Redoubt volcano in Alaska and proceeded to record floods along the Red River. As this map shows, much of the nation can expect some level of flooding during the Spring runoff.
At the turning of the seasonal page it’s interesting that the politicians can’t hold the attention of the news cycle. It almost a relief to have the economic uncertainty displaced bigger forces which we have no control over.
In the midst of these stressors, Earth Hour was celebrated last night, gaining a great deal of attention in the blogosphere. Regardless of where you stand on global warming, reconnecting to the planet is clearly a task of our historical moment. It’s one of the possible values of moving out of the industrial society and into the information society.
One things for sure. I feel more related to the soil under my feet than the political systems that surround me. While our Presedent is rattling his saber toward the Afgan mountains, in these hills, the sap is running in the maple trees. I can sense it.
“At times I feel as if I am spread out over the landscape and inside things, and am myself living in every tree, in the splashing of the waves, in the clouds and the animals that come and go, in the procession of the seasons. There is nothing in the Tower that has not grown into its own form over the decades, nothing with which I am not linked. Here everything has its history, and mine; here is space for the spaceless kingdom of the world’s soul and the psyche’s hinterland.” Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, p. 225-226.
The darkest days are upon us. I’ve had two encounters this week that will punctuate the transition of this Solstice forever in my memory. Tuesday night I visited the Woodbourne State Correctional Facility. Today, I witnessed a three family home engulfed in flames.
The trip through the lock down labyrinth was my first. Many impressions: the aloof culture of the guards; the gratitude of the inmates for the visit; the distrust the inmates had for one another. They were hardened and vulnerable simultaneously. The suffering a few of them expressed about being incarcerated was so thick you could slice it.
And then there was the man, now 51, already with 25 years behind bars. He told me his tale of attempted suicide…how he later became a suicide prevention teacher…how he had witnessed others take their lives behind bars…how he found a twelve step program…how he got honest…how he found Islam. He shared that he will finally come up for parole next year, but has no idea how it will go. He told me he’s ready to accept whatever gets decided. He meant it. It was clear that he already has his freedom.
Then this morning, the horrid image of the home spewing black smoke into the cold sky. It seemed we were witnessing lives ruined, if not lost, ascending up into the sky. A hush settled over the bus I was on as we stared in wide eyed amazement, the flames darting higher and higher, the column of smoke intensifying.
Notable images like these seem to deliver a message much as dreams can if we spend the time to dwell with them. This Solstice, when the light is extinguished before it’s rebirth: the light of freedom within imprisonment and the destructive power of fire. I have not wrapped my mind around this enigma fully, but I’m pondering the nature of the Spirit in the midst of our material world.
Raving at #NMS08
Patience alongside the Twitter stream
Lifestream Digest for February 23rd