Robert Brady, living in Japan, just does really nice work. Here is an entry from hsi blog, Notes From Pure Land Mountain on fire:

MORE LIGHT

...like all living things a fire is a river of need, a kind of conversation, a dialog of light with darkness, like the fire in the sky and in a leaf. The heart itself is a flame, ablaze at the sight of itself in another eye; we carry all this like a sky in ourselves, and so when we come to tend a fire, we find that delight of meeting an old friend. Just stir this bit here and the fire flares up, fuel once starved for air now fed, from ember to flame, setting new thoughts alight. Tending a fire is the whole soul's delight, much like tending to life itself; in return the fire shares more than light and warmth, if we listen to its ancient tongue, for it speaks a language that lived far before and lives yet within us: This is the way you should tend yourself; this is the way you should tend others and your world. The fire is that of us outside ourselves. We recognize this tacitly, as we do in the light of stars. When we gaze into a fire's light we gaze into a mystic mirror, upon vast and untold secrets of ourselves. What we find there we feel to our depths, but cannot say.

The same thing is going on here too, as I work through our huge pile of mill ends. It's a nice challenge trying not to burn them too hot, getting a nice bed of coals and then acheiving the ultimate trance inducing moment when the flames seem to turn to liquid and pour gently over the coals, the air in the stove literally glowing.

Ahhhhh...

posted by Chris at 12:58 AM | |