Words from Pep Night Fires

Words from Pep

Night Fires

By James “Pep” Washburn

Here and there among the ashes a small flame would brighten the night as my stick stirred the remaining coals. I slipped my pipe into its leather pouch. It was past midnight. Time to begin threading my way home across the meadow under night skies. . . . . . . Millennia after millennia we gathered around the night fires, absorbed their radiation, and gazed upward into eternity. Drawn together around the soft glow and dancing embers, night whispered mysteries to our human family of long ago. There we mused over the day as darkness tenderly pulled us toward introspection. The sun may have scattered our souls, stretched them over of the land, but Cassiopeia, Polaris, Orion and our fires returned us to our center. It was the splendor, the patterns and power of that black dome that brought us again to our humility. It was fire that kept the terror of the night away. In the light of our fires, a light swallowed by the overwhelming heavens, we understood our frailty. . . . . . Hundreds of thousands of mystical nights and fires are imprinted on our genetic memory. Our initiation to the divine came through baptism in those night fires of the past. To know your place in the world, the roots of your being, sit in the night. Tend the fire in silence and meekness. Look within and look above. Feel the magnitude of your insignificance. The catalyst of night fire, the flicker of stars, still turn our heart toward the loving gaze and embrace of the Architect of the Universe. . . . . For the soul’s wisdom, flee the toxic lights of mercury, neon and sodium. Turn from the glare. Peer into the coals of low fire and endless sky. Know that you are being observed and understood. You are not alone. Go into the frightening majestic night, light your fire and listen to our ancestors softly speak, “there is nothing to fear.”. . . . . Leaving the meadow and stepping onto gravel road I again removed my pipe from its leather pouch. In the silence I rekindled a tiny red glow in its bowl, offering fragrance into the air around me. Night-bird hooted in the east as if calling up the moon not yet risen. The distant past was walking with me and starlight would guide me home. 
-- www.theteacherwithin.com
ONE WORLD  -  ONE FAMILY OF MAN  -  ONE CREATOR OF ALL