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| starting a fire is magical |
With SARS-CoV2 receding in Seattle, I threw the first yard party since fall of 2019, complete with a bonfire. Over the years, my guests and I have developed the practice of
intentionally burning things in the fire as a little ritual. When our primeval ancestors danced all night around a fire, fire was literally at the center of human spiritual practice. Ancient Persian religion established the now-familiar pattern of a holy man (Zoroaster) and his holy book (the Avesta), and Zoroastrians have revered sacred fires ever since. Today, fire is still a potent symbol in people’s minds, and even Unitarian-Universalists have a flame as a symbol, in a slight nod to those ancestral fires. More prosaically, I have found the grownups and kids can both take joy in burning things up.
In the latest fire, we had a chair to burn. Chairs are always welcome, as the first big item I purged many years ago was a dilapidated chair. Of special note this time was an original portrait provided by an old friend of mine. It was a portrait of her ex-boyfriend, and he had given it to her as a gift after breaking her heart. Into the fire with it! I contributed a bird nest, a literal empty nest to mark this part of my life now that my daughter has bought a home in Pasadena. It was fun to point out to other at the party-goers what the baby birds had left in the empty nest: crap. What a metaphor. Other party goers, young and old, wrote notes on paper and consigned them to the fire. Usually these notes document the negative things that people want to purge or have purged. They can also be love notes to the universe or whatever you want. For one party years ago, the theme was beautifying the world by burning ugly things, and ugly things are always a good addition to the fire. One friend brings old checks to burn, although I don’t know if he still uses checks. A couple I know burned stacks of old documents related to an online controversy that they had been embroiled in. Sometimes what gets burned is something well-loved but worn out, something too beloved to throw into a landfill but no longer worth keeping.
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| big fires not allowed this year |
Thanks to the heat and drought in the Pacific Northwest, there’s a
burn ban across Washington state. Our next fire has to be a modest affair in a metal container. Stupid climate change.
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