Blow on the Embers

Fire is sacred. Fire burns. Fire transforms.

The poet, Rumi, says:

            Love is the fire and we are the wood.

Blase, my partner, adds:

            And therein lies our freedom.

On Wednesday our fire blazed. Our household quintet, Blase, my partner, Ariel, my daughter, Ethan, her boyfriend, and Holly our housemate gathered, and burned heaps of apple prunings.

The prunings fall from the orchard trees in February. They’re lopped, snipped, and sawn off the trees over two weeks. We prune to vitalize the trees, direct their shape, remove dead and diseased wood, and most importantly, to let in light. We open up windows for sunlight to penetrate the tree, making sure all branches have a sky view. When one them doesn’t get enough light, they start to shrivel, even more shaded, become smaller, until they die back.

The pruned apple branches winter on the ground under the trees, providing healthy food for voles and mice who chew the bark. Then, when the snow is gone, and the small creatures have plenty of other foodstuff, we collect all the prunings and burn them. Fire blight, a bacterial infection is dormant in winter, and hides in the branches. Burning all the pruned wood help keep fire blight out of the orchard.

Holly and I gathered the tools, throwing them in the back of Blase’s old pickup truck—rakes, a shovel, a box of newspaper, kindling, matches, a portable gas water pump, and long hose. We also grabbed the canister of kerosene. Ariel and Ethan hopped into the bed of the truck. 

Around this mountain of prunings we made small fires with newspaper and kindling. We had a Christmas tree dropped off by a friend. Ariel jammed it into the pile above my small fire. It took. Whoomm! Whoosh!

Ethan and Ariel lighting the fire.

The flames licked through the tree, disappearing the needles and small branches. Then there was quiet. We tried to whisper our small fires into blaze until Blase arrived. He took the container of kerosene and started pouring throughout. With his blazing instincts, the fire caught.

The apple wood is green so you need a hot fire to really get them to take. But they did and the fire burned. More wood caught, whirring and snapping, and the flames grew. Menorahs of little flames on sticks, candles on an altar, a pyre. Fire warming our hearts.

With the forks attached to the bucket of the tractor, I rumbled along the apple rows. Our bonfire contained only a small portion of the orchard prunings. Holly had piled the rest at the end of each row. I teased the forks under a pile at the far end of the orchard, lifted, and scooped, held the massive tangle high up in the air and drove back to the fire. Blase and Ethan were tending with pitchforks. Putting the tractor in low gear, I pulled as close to the flames as I dared. With the bucket held high, Blase signaled, and the bucket dumped. Flames leapt, Blase and Ethan teased out the caught stragglers, and I reversed, to circle back to the next row for another pile pick up.

Meanwhile Holly and Ariel gathered blueberry prunings and white pine branches from across the road in the berry patch. We had little traffic jams on the cart road, but everyone has more patience these days: we’re in no hurry, we’re just here.

In only a few hours, we managed to burn what we needed to. As the fire ebbed, we listened to the last cracklings, and stared into the black sea of charred wood. Some embers transformed into white ash. With the breath of wind, snowflakes rose and fell.

In the final lines in Archibald MacLeish’s play, JB, his retelling of the story of Job, Sarah says to her husband,

Then blow on the coal of the heart, my darling,
It’s all the light now.
Blow on the coal of the heart.
The candles in the churches are out.
The lights have gone out of the sky.
Blow on the coal of the heart
And we’ll see by and by . . .

Strength, even in darkest times, can be found in a whisper. The dark and the light, the suffering and joy, have always been and will always be the human condition. We can choose to kindle the fires, to breathe love through it all. The photo below is from a women’s Full Moon Fire we had on March 7, 2020. It’s hard to believe our world has changed so much in less than a month. When we can be physically close to each other again, we will celebrate with a great bonfire. You are all invited!

Who are the Crones?

We are the crones, the old and wrinkled, wise ones. We have many names— Hecate, Spider Grandmother, Demeter; Siren, Gaea, and Oracle. We wait at the crossroads. We praise and encourage the living, we honor and care for the dying. In times of darkness, we know spring will return.

Woman Launching Boat, bronze sculpture, cherry wood, LH

At the time of the winter solstice ancient people believed that we must help the Light to be reborn. In many cultures, the crones facilitated this return. Women carried the mystery of life and death; women labored to guide back the sun. 

 Then things changed and men took control of women, especially in matters of religion.

Buddhism has traditionally followed the established social norms of the patriarchy into which the Buddha was born. When the Buddha established the rules for his followers, he differentiated between nuns and monks. Any nun, no matter how old or enlightened, had to bow down to a monk, even a novice. In Zen monasteries, the lineage of the transmission from one male teacher to the next has always been chanted as part of the service. Recently, things are changing. At Zen Mountain Monastery we now chant the names of the enlightened women of the way in addition to the male lineage. There were many great and compassionate teachers who taught students both male and female. Today, we have an altar in the front of the meditation hall for Mahapajapati, the first Buddhist nun and teacher.

I began to think about other groups of women left unsung. In the American frontier world, Johnny Appleseed is a celebrated hero. He stands out as a bold revolutionary, spreading seeds and saplings, helping the settlers establish ownership to land by planting an orchard, and sharing his beliefs based on the Swedenborg religion. But who are the frontier women who helped create this country?  I found a few famous names—Belle Star, Poker Alice, Pearl deVere, Annie Oakley, Etta Place, and Calamity Jane. Belle was known for riding in a black velvet dress, six guns on her hips, and holding up stagecoaches. Poker Alice—you guessed it—was a devilishly good poker player, and bordello owner. Pearl deVere operated The Old Homestead, a lavishly upscale brothel in Cripple Creek, Colorado. You get the picture. Nice women don’t make history, but the names we choose to remember determine the history we remember.

The myths of ancient people are filled with stories of goddesses whose powers equaled that of their male counterparts. The history of women in the West is much more than brothels, bars, and Wild West shows. It is the story of hardworking American women, Native American women, Spanish-Mexican women, and the Chinese immigrant women who were sold and shipped to California by their impoverished families to work in laundries, bars, and mining camps. We need to remember all of these women and what a dark place the world has been for so many of them.  

Solstice Fire, Old Frog Pond Farm, photo: Alexis Pappis

December 21st is the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year. At the farm we have a solstice fire where we reenact the return of the sun. In our ritual, it is the crones who go on a journey to find the sun and rebirth the Light. The crones remind us that there are many kinds of darkness. The darkness of racism and sexism, of hatred and war, of injustice, of sorrow and loss. The crones also remind us that there is darkness inside each of us, as well as a light. It is from this light, this often forgotten or darkened light, that the Goddesses labor, and birth the sun. Like Demeter knowing that she will be rejoined with her daughter, Persephone, we need to trust that the light will return, grief will be healed, and plants will bear fruit again.

Carl Jung said, "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." In remembering the names of those women who are forgotten, we shine light into the darkness of their cultural obscurity. As we light the solstice fire, we bring light to this world stamped with anger, aggression, and force. In gathering and opening our hearts to one another we grow the light. Happy Solstice!