The House of Impermanence

It is your turn now,you waited, you were patient.The time has come, for us to polish you. We will transform your inner pearl into a house of fire. You're a gold mine. Did you know that, hidden in the dirt of the earth? It is your turn now, to be placed in fire.Let us cremate your impurities.                                    -J. Rumi 

A little over two dozen of us gather in a circle pulling our heads down into our coats against the damp Virginia night air. We stand together less than half the number of those who met near here the first time six years ago to form a village in order to fan the embers brought back from our Vision Quests. We stare blindly into the space between us until the fire tender approaches the neat flat-topped pyramid of wood in the center of the fire pit and ignites the kindling there. Slowly our faces become visible, faces of a community on an edge.  

As the last of us arrives, from somewhere on the circumference of our assembly, way before I am ready for what will come next, someone else moves into the circle. It is the bundle tender, the seventh of her kind. The last.  

The bundle tender carries her prize with its rocks and shells and feathers and other items infused with meaning and our stories snugly inside at chest height. At the center of the circle she raises the tightly bound container higher and pauses.  

For the briefest of moments, I  feel the dark woods beyond holding our silence intently, maybe even worshipfully. In less than the length of a breath the bundle reaches the high arc of our intention as a community and then, plunk, is down on top of the pyramid. 

The dark package sits unevenly on the short tower of logs. The  fledgling fire inside the sloping sticks flares. The bundle begins to slide off. The tender catches it, gently nudging it back into place.   

Something immense is moving nearby, just beyond the edge of firelight. The fire burnishes the bundle a long time. Eventually, the bottom begins to glow and  smoke. But, the bundle refuses to flame, crouching motionless instead like a rabbit when it is cornered by a greater thing. It will not free us, will not heft the responsibilities of our decision by dematerializing quickly. The wait becomes excruciating. 

For maybe 10 long minutes, we stand transfixed watching the glowing bundle. Gradually, we come forward, one at a time, with offerings for the fire–-a picture, a letter, a stick, a wreath the size of a fist. The blaze builds, beating golden wings against the sides of the dark brown body. Flaxen specks of light blossom and bolt from the flaming house of impermanence, skittering skyward, darting this way then that before disappearing. 

The bundle responds only by smoldering, then, without warning, whoosh, it frees itself from the precarious nest where we placed it. It tumbles through the red branches onto the hot earth effortlessly like a leaf released from the gray fingers of an autumn tree.  A golden-scarlet cascade of sparks scamper from the heart of the fire pit announcing the bundle’s homecoming.  

We watch silently, like the explorers in the jungle that Pablo Naruda wrote about. The ones who hand over the rare green deer to the roasting spit and eat it with great remorse. The ones who know the rare green deer must die if they are to live.  

"A woman standing in the weeds.A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what’s coming next iss coming with its own heave and grace".  ~ Mary Oliver.                                                         

Now, it is our turn to be placed in the fire. This is the fire the other fires were bringing us to all along". 

M.Beck WSC VII
Winter 2006