Fire

The beauty of fire.

The ritual of lighting the fire, tearing paper out of the old phone book, scrunching it up, placing a pyramid of sticks and applying a match to it. The fire in it’s infancy, delicate and fickle, quickly firing into a bright flame, then abating as it slowly takes hold, embers gently glowing. That moment where it could go either way. Bigger kindling goes on as you trust the heat; they catch; and the fire powers into action, consuming ravenously, giving out nurturing life giving warmth.

Stone

Sitting in a library, slowly acclimatising to working on a local government project again. Next to me is a solid stone wall, all lumps and ripples and slapped together cement. There is a solidity, a reassurance inherent in stone. It’s always just there being solid, like the earth but a bit more visible because we’ve sliced it out and put it somewhere we can easily see.

There is a violence to it’s rectangular form, it has been fashioned, beaten into shape to serve a purpose. Yet it speaks also of beauty, a beauty beyond a function (although there is a beauty in that); there is something in it that speaks to me obliquely, something it holds while my mind melts into new shapes and i look deeply into that dark pit of transformation. When i return, the stone will still be there, holding a steadfast solidity for me, being stone.

Beauty

I’ve been struggling to think what to write in this blog for a while. Wondering what the point of it is, what it gives me aside from some random ramblings. I’ve been working on setting up a blog particularly for my spiritual musings, which will get there when i’m ready.

But today i had an idea about this blog, and it’s an idea that can be quite useful to me. The basic enquiry for the blog (for the time being anyway) is to enquire into beauty. It’s about me noticing the beauty around me, appreciating what is no matter how dark the road may be at that time. Even the darkness is beautiful.

And so today, a day of darkness, of exploring some of my deepest hurts and disabling emotions, i noticed how beautiful the blossoms were in the driveway of my home. My heart eased.



It aroused the memory of seeing these blossums last year, and that i’ve been here for more than the turn of a year. In amongst the harsh cold of winter, such delicate and beautiful flowers call our attention to the glorious flow of life. And a ray of sunshine emerges through the clouds.