Burning the land

I believe that the practice of burning stubble is no longer allowed in England. Here in the US it is still widespread. Stubble, and wild grass. Acres and acres of it, out on the prairie.

At our local nature centre, they’ve been doing it too. Look at this picture.



Before and after. What a striking contrast. On the left is the untouched piece of land, and on the right is where they’ve burnt the old grass. You can see what it looks like a little while after the fire. I watched it, as the ground recovered from blackened nothingness to the beginnings of lush green. It changed literally day by day. It really looks quite verdant and healthy, doesn’t it? But just a very few days before, it had been like this.



I feel like the earth. There I was, minding my own business, and then cancer came, like a fire. I didn’t see it coming, I didn't ask for it, I didn’t want it. Nearly two years ago. It hurt, it destroyed, it ravaged. Pain and loss and fear. That was me, in the second picture: bare soil and blackened stems. I probably didn’t look like that to you, to others, and not even to myself. It’s not very nice to look at, when the earth is like that (click on the picture to see it full size and you'll see what I mean), so I didn’t pause to examine it much and I displayed it even less.

But the truth is that these things, these fires and cancers, if you let them, bring life. They bring growth and newness. They take out some of the dead brush. I don’t want to push the analogy too far. I rather liked myself as I was before, honestly. But I like myself, love myself, a whole lot more now. That top picture, before and after, that’s me (click on it - it's so much better full size). Somehow, in ways I see and I’m sure in ways I don’t see too, I am more full of life, more full of potential, more deeply truly myself, more fully ME, than I have ever been.

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