The woodpile

As I sit here watching the snowfall, I am acutely aware of my firewood and just how precious it is to us. It is being buried in snow with only tarps covering the top of the woodpiles. This firewood is the source of heat for our home. It is our fuel. We need to be very conscious of it, to keep it dry, to keep it accessible or life here becomes a lot less tenable.

When we consider the fuel for our home, it is visible to us. It is right outside piled up in neat well stacked rows. We watch it week after week, getting smaller as we burn armload after armload, trying to keep the yurt up to a viable temperature. We spend time and energy keeping it shoveled out, making sure the tarps stay on in the wind, rain and snow, keeping it dry and making sure it gets us through to Spring.

In Druidry we consider the elements, Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Our fuel is related to Earth. It is material, gifted from the Earth to feed our Fire. It is easy to see how our firewood relates to Earth and the fire in the wood stove relates to Fire. These aren’t really even metaphor, just perfectly tangible analogies.

Now consider our bigger life journey.
What fuels us in life?
What does that fuel feed?
What is the fire?

The fuel can be tangible things such as food. But also it can be things such as intellectual concepts and ideas, music, friendship, love, beauty, etc. I think of the fire as our passion in life, our vitality, the energy of our life put into motion.

So I ask you, what fuels your passion, your vitality, your life? What do you do to keep your fuel dry (functional), accessible (present) and in abundance (meeting your need)?

I offer this up just as food for thought. I think it is vital that we consider what fuels us in life. Is it viable in the long run? Is it cared for enough? Are we finding enough to live a life full of passion and vitality? Are we seeing our fuel as the sacred element that it is?

Something to meditate on during the cold dark months of winter…

Blessings of deep snows and a warm hearth,
Snowhawke /|\

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Five Seven Five

I have always written poetry, and recently I have been exploring writing haiku. Haiku if you don’t know is a form of Japanese poetry constructed of three lines with a set number of syllables for each line, 5, 7, and 5. They all have this set pattern.

For me, writing haiku isn’t so much an exercise if wordplay. It isn’t about struggling to find the perfect words and phrases, reworking and rewriting them until the poem emerges. Haiku is an act of listening, an act of meditation (listening and meditation are synonymous for me). It is about becoming the observer, to gain perspective on the energies at play. Even though the energies may quake through us, we can at the same time be the observer watching the whole process. Making music can be like this, where we are in the groove, dancing with it, yet at the same time a slight step ahead, thinking about and observing what comes out of our soul to play, observing what the other musicians are doing/feeling and finding expression to add to the whole. Making love can be like this as well.

I highly recommend this practice of haiku. Haiku challenges me to strip away distraction to let the essence of the expressing shine through. Some attempts are better than others of course but the exercise of listening, of meditation is the important part.

Spend some time in meditation and try writing some. It is fun. I invite you to post them here. Below are a few of mine.

Blessings of peace,
Snowhawke /|\

I touch you soul deep
The hand of deity strikes
And leaves me shaken

Emotion pushed words
Fail to convey true meaning
But reveal so much

Setting sun turns red
Intense swirl of wind and cloud
Snowflakes dance unbound!

Down down down I slide
Love laughs as I go under
Caught in her whirlpool

A lifetime passes
In an instance, in a breath
So many pieces

Are our steps futile?
Do all these small acts matter?
rain drops fill the sea

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