This is our first Christmas without my grandmother here in physical form and we miss her. But, her beauty lives on in her Christmas Cactus which is covered in blooms bringing color and life to this season of new family traditions. I also have her favorite amaryllis about to bloom on my dining room table. What a lifetime gift of the love of growing things both of my grandmothers bestowed upon me.
Return
The light begins to return today. The season of the dormant seed.. potential and hope. This is my favorite season.. this part of the life cycle.. for the promise of life being held within the shell deep of the seed in the ground as the visions that come after the harvest now must lie in wait.. and, for the potential of each seed.. between now and the great turning in early February when the light shifts to a sweet pastel yellow is the time to consider the seeds to be planted the coming cycle. As a tender of plants and soil and other living things this metaphor for this season speaks to me. What seeds will you plant this year?
Contemplation
I have sat in this spot on this river for 20 years. I never tire of it or wish I was somewhere else when I am here. When I visit this spot something inside me remembers, wakes up, and feelings flow like the water that is held between the banks. This is a place I call home. A place where my heart melts and my mind calms..
Coals
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.
