It Lives

We inherited a leftover burn pile--and then we added to it. Last Wednesday was Burn Day! My first. I wrote the following while sitting with the fire for 4+ hours.

It Begins in the Day

​​I tend the fire—it is my first. I can’t breathe--but altogether it feels appropriate. I first I was bored fire-tending-- and then I was not. One can pretend a lot of different scenarios while attending a super large fire: Lord-of-the-Rings-Mountaintop-Fire-Signal Tender, Stranded-On-Desert-Island-About-To-Die-Fire Tender, Game-of-Thrones-Khaleesi-Dragon-Fire Tender, Beach-Blanket-Bingo-Bonfire Tender...I've been them all.
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It Continues Through Dusk

​Where there was no fire, I created ONE. Where there was one fire, I created TWO. And, hopefully, where there are TWO I can create NONE.
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​Raking through a giant fire is like exploring the moon or some other planet’s moon…or a made up moon that isn’t really there at all...Even though I know it is unlikely that I will unearth anything that is so-called “valuable” I do keep unearthing “interesting things”. And aren’t “interesting things” better, in the long run, than “valuable?
 
That may be an obnoxious statement; I am not afraid of money. Interesting and valuable would be best, I think.

Ok, most of these things are neither interesting nor valuable.

Everything I find interesting these days, everything I find valuable seems to come from a Theory of Absence. The creation of nothing:
 
Buck wild. Giant sucking hole. Giant sucking whole. Giant sucking the toes of small men. Tiny people with special belts to hold up who they are. Sitting in trees, waiting to drown in the elbows of rivers. A friend won in battle. A shared enemy uniting two false lands. Stars that come down to grab you when you least want it. Hands that hold you down when you never want it. Sails of Eyes. Arms of arms.  Walking backwards three broad strides with your arms extended if you hope to ever communicate anything at all. The tiny little colors of red, green and blue tell you anything you want to hear. But killing people should always be wrong.
 
See there—I just created nothing.

Here is something; a new life form that lives in the fire. The fire is its HOME:

I love fire and all her denizens.

The only God I know is absent by design. The Chilean rugby team that crashed in the Andes mountains---they went through some crazy shit. Most of those boys—and a few women-- had been raised in religious households. God was assumed. But as the frozen tips of the earth’s vast heave began to swallow them whole, some began to question this so-called (valuable and interesting) God of Love and Mercy. When they ate their teammates rather than starve they asked (naturally) did God put me here for this?Is it better to survive at all costs? What is God if not Life itself?  But there was one guy that never spoke of religion, never spoke of God and did not join in the frozen prayers in the hollowed fuselage--he claimed agnosticism. In the book, a boy approached the Agnostic one freezing night. The boy asked, “How can you not believe in God?” But before his teammate could answer he added, “How can I believe in God?”

I loved the response that the Agnostic gave him. I loved it so much I read the passage of this book every morning for six months. I don’t remember anything verbatim at this point, but this is what I took away from it:
 
God did not create the Universe and God did not create us. The God of this universe was created just as we were --with this world, for this world.  This God is a God but it operates within the same organic framework of nature in which we operate--but beyond our understanding. The Laws of God are the Laws of Nature, just as the Laws of God and Nature should be the Laws of Man. This God is always with us, and it will neither save you nor condemn you. This God does not interfere in the way so many people are hoping. But this God is accessible—and it is possible to align yourself with the God of this universe by aligning your actions with principles we witness in the natural world everyday. When I am in harmony with what already exists, I am with God. That connection brings acceptance and acceptance, for me, is love.
 
Now that’s a Nothing that’s Something!
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