My good friend Mike says, “tending your fire is like tending yourself”. I think he’s right. A glowing bed of coals is the heart of the fire. It is where the heat comes from but those coals have to be fed or they go out. As I’ve been reflecting on the solo fires from this past weekend and the brave women who went out into the forest to take the journey into the night I’ve been thinking a lot about why the solo fire is such an important part of my life and why like Sit Spot I want to share it with others. Tending a fire is sometimes work and almost always worth it to me. We need it both for survival and as a great teacher of presence. The more I practice tending the fire and spending time with it the more I get out of it. (Very much like sit spot.) The harder I work at tending my fire well the fewer toxic thoughts run through my mind. The more I watch it the better I understand how to feed it. A near perfect metaphor for living. Staying up all night with a fire in this way for the first time reaches into the depths of determination we each carry with us. We have to keep it alive. We have to keep ourselves alive by feeding it, watching it, tending it. Sometimes we doze off, sometimes we put on wood that's too rotten and it creates a lot of smoke. Sometimes, you have to feed it constantly to keep it alive and sometimes it goes out. No matter what the night comes. With a Solo Fire you walk the edge of light and learn about life. This is why we do the Solo Fire.
Clouds
I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.
~e. e. cummings
Leo?? Maybe??
We now have three bull frogs in the pond. This one showed up a couple of weeks ago. I can’t say for sure but size wise he’s about the right size to be Leo. When we are watching one another he feels familiar to me.. makes me wonder where he’s been and why he came back..
Beech Drops
I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.
~ Anne Lamott
