Tonight is my Flamekeeping shift. I’m trying to take this time to be more definite in my beliefs, and laying out a solid plan of practice. As I sit and ponder, I struggle with the all too familiar, growing knowledge that often haunts me as a writer: what I say cannot capture what it is I am feeling or understanding. Sometimes, it is very close. Other times, my words utterly fail in the face of pure perceived experiential knowledge.
The more think about my path, and the more I sit and look inside myself and try to define what it is I believe, the more trouble I have with this inability of language to capture what it is I feel about the world, about myself, and about my place in it. These key ingredients to a coherent set of assumptions about the world–spiritual beliefs–should, if anything should be communicated, if only to myself for greater clarity. The closer I seem to come to something, the stiller I become, waiting for it to manifest as a clear thought that I maybe, maybe will finally be able to capture on paper. The closer, the quieter I become, straining hard to hear it sound through my inner ear.
Still closer, and still elusive.
As I focus on the flame tonight for Brighid, I think of how easy it is to see the hotness of the yellow color, to feel the tiny warmth radiating and the pulsing light gently wash on the immediate surroundings. How easy it is to perceive, and understand, without the medium of words. Even my words here, trying to describe what I see, and what I feel, take far more time to process and only then approximate my experience.
An Seanchas Fior is a path based primarily on the power of words to shape our lives, to form patterns to live with. My path therefore appears to be founded on something weak, insubstantial, and ultimately, inconsequential. Words are a product of our imagination, stories the product of words.
But suddenly a last thought shimmers through my head as I prepare to extinguish the flame, and go to bed. What if, my thought whispers, what if it is the other way around?
What if words are a product of stories? This seems logical. After all, our experiences of life came first, and our words came second to try to share them. Thus, my world, based upon words, is actually based upon stories, not words; on events, not things.
What if, that tiny thought says, what if that path, and everything my world stands upon, is a flame–an event based upon the interaction of other things, which are themselves, a result of the interaction of other things. What if words are in fact far more powerful than we often consider them to be: what they fail to capture may not be a thing at all, but an event–insubstantial, but not inconsequential. Their power, or lack thereof, hints at the truth: that what they fail to capture cannot be captured at all.
I am a flame, ready to ignite, ready to be blown out. I am a word on the breath, ready to exhale, ready to fade.
