Somewhere upward of 24,000 acres are burning in Colorado today, with thousands more just across the border in neighboring states. The Roaring Fork Watershed is currently at about 15–66% of normal, with most of the watershed in stage 4 (of 5) drought. Two days ago, the sky was so hazy with smoke that we could almost not see either of the two mountain escarpments that hold the north and south boundaries of this valley, each 10 miles away. This morning, a few raindrops have fallen, which is both wonderful and a bit unnerving, as the lightning that comes with these monsoonal rains has been the start of all the fires now burning.

wildfires

wild

fires

 Countless more-than-humyns have lost their lives and habitats. Many of our fellow humyns are evacuated, waiting in some temporary place for word on their home, favorite tree, lifeweb they live within.

meanwhile the world goes on (Oliver, 2017)

meanwhile . . . - written, sung, played by tbird, circa 2020

[lyrics at bottom]

I find it challenging to conceptualize the impact our species has had on the life systems of our planet. Fire ecology, for instance, is not something new or different to the landscape. There are certain trees that actually need the heat and smoke to support the opening of their cones for the release of the seed (e.g., Lodgepole pine, Pitch pine, Jack pine). Yet, we know this is different. We know because science is impartial, especially quantitative (i.e., earth-system science), numbers-based science. Fire is an emergent phenomenon directly correlated with water scarcity and heat, both of which are rising threats across a warming Earth.

Human hubris and critical condemnation aside, the transformative aspect of fire can be a profound teacher. I have in mind the deep-thinking, heart-led luminaries such as Joanna Macy (2012), Terry Tempest Williams (2019), and Meredith Little and Steven Foster (1989, 1992, 1998). The latter two–- who founded both Rite of Passage, Inc. and the School of Lost Borders–- were integral in bringing a secular, wilderness rite of passage ceremony back into this culture. Colleen and I have had the privilege of being trained by and now guiding with the School of Lost Borders, which, as a potent foundational pillar, holds a barebones way of ceremony where everything belongs and there is no dogma.

One of said barebones of this model is the four shields of human nature, originally a 'five-minute teaching' to Meredith and Steven. Over the past fifty years, wilderness rite-of-passage participants have taken this teaching into ceremony as a way of reorienting the humyn tendency toward anthropocentric thinking and reinviting the lifeworld and living elements back into a co-collaborative dance of ceremony. In essence, the tiny five-minute teaching has been explored by thousands of humyns over the decades, reinforming the guides in a cyclical process of emergence and becoming. The history of that story can be found in their many books and is beyond the scope of this blog (see references below if interested).

The four shields of human nature is employed within these wilderness rite of passage ceremonies as a way to give a common, earth-centered language to the ceremonial process. Briefly, the four shields are a map that aligns and integrates the developmental cycle of a human life with the cyclical patterns of the lifeworld. Each shield has a corresponding season, color, time of day, element, and corresponding human developmental pattern with associated psychology as follows [and much more]:

South - summer, red, noon, water, Child + body

West - autumn, black, sunset, earth, Adolescent + psyche

North - winter, white, midnight, air, Adult + mind

East - spring, yellow, sunrise, fire, Spirit + transpersonal

So much of the dominant world culture is now based on reason, on logic, on linear structures and forms. The industrial growth society demands an ever-upward yield curve for shareholders, expanding gross domestic products (GDP), and glittering new technological innovations. This socialized and encultured norm is almost invisible except that it has almost no place for feeling, being, grief, and unstructured play. Further, the assumptive framework bases all of it on an infinite amount of resources, and ignores the essential reality that we live on a finite planet.

To be direct, we might call this an exaggerated north shield, where there is an overreliance and allegiance to the structures and forms, to the products and outputs, to the made things.

As the seasonality of the Earth reminds us, however, such frozen structures cannot last forever. For even as the snows seem permanent in the deep-heart of winter, spring will come, and with it, the dismantling of the very essence of old into the unstoppable renewal of Life's return.

Even simpler, each and every being that has ever lived, has died. I will die. You will die. And what is beyond that doorway, that great mystery and great unknown, is the essence of the East Shield. That sacred fire of renewal disintegrates all that we are into some vastness which we cannot see or know while alive.

But….

      perhaps, we can light a candle in the dark, and be with such an essence

perhaps, we might take ourselves out into the dark of the night and watch the sunrise

or maybe, on that last night of our vision quest, we might sit vigil all night with that great mystery and call out into that great magical unknown for renewal, hope, and depth…

Like a finger pointing to the moon, the east shield is not the finger or the moon: it is formless, or rather, beyond form. The east is what is awakened in us by vast, incomprehensible brilliance. The east, it is said, is the place of impermanence, serendipity, synchronicity, art-for-art's sake, the divine, god/goddess, reverence, spirituality, paradox, and the great transformative process, which, nearly always, has both deconstructive and constructive aspects. The east shield is also the place of the trickster, the sacred clown, the coyote who, it has been said, will pee on the sacred fire if people are taking it all too seriously–-a wild articulation of the importance of the pairs of opposites, the profane and the sacred, the light and the dark, the ordinary and the extraordinary, the living and the dying.

Of course, the four shields of human nature is only a map, only a set of coordinates by which to understand where we are, only an idea. No one is asking anyone to believe in it, nor to embrace it. The power of the model, for me, is the fractal pattern of the lifeworld writ large across the yellow Aspen leaves as it is across the faces of those deep in grief and loss. The invitation is not to balance our shields, but rather to understand that we are always in movement around this sacred wheel of life, on every scale.

And so I return, to these burning lands and smoky skies, to my climate grief (Woodbury, 2019), to the wild and unmoored crazy wisdom (Trungpa, 1991) that permeates this sky and asks each of us deeply, is that what we really want? It is impossible for me not to feel complicit in the devastation we humyns are razing upon the lifeworld. Yet, simply stating that isn't enough because words alone only wrap me, hold me into the great unraveling without activating the embodiedness of the great turning (Macy & Johnstone, 2012).

Ergo, not only is feeling the feels of climate grief essential in recognizing our stuckness, being with that grief is critical for realigning our lives and culture toward a life-sustaining paradigm.

Can we "embrace fearlessly this burning world", as Lopez (2022) asked? Can I, even as I see the tears on the faces of the people who have lost everything, seeing the smoke in the sky shifting the birds' daily lives, seeing the forests who I won't know again now decimated, can I embrace this paradoxical and confusing wild Fire that is burning across our sacred Earth as a divine mirror?

Can I, as Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen once told our phd class, "not waste the suffering"?

Truly, to live in that paradox, to not solve it but to be with it, that is my deepest understanding of the east shield and the invitation vibrant in the inbox of all humyns on this planet right now. This paradox of life and death, of being and nonbeing, is beyond any of our abilities to 'manage,' and therefore invites us, again and again, to let go and open toward Spirit in all its too-small names…

In reverence,

tbird

meanwhile [lyrics]

we are waiting, for the earth song

& we are waiting, for the policies to join along

meanwhile, the forests burn

& meanwhile, the oceans die and the corals say goodbye

o the grief now, as we watch and do little to change the way it goes

& o the grief for the shock of land on its throes

o

o it goes

o cause we know, the way it goes

and so wake up, fill your cup, and then

turn your gaze outside, and look within our home

'what can I do simply by being me to lead the way?'

'what can I do for you today, in what way'…

& meanwhile, the earth turns slow, a cooking roll

& meanwhile, the oceans die, and the corals say goodbye

don't turn away now, you can see it, o don't be proud

release your grief, release your grief, and know that we are here

we came for this, to be a part of, a great turn

a great turning toward home

meanwhile, the forest learn to let it go

& meanwhile, the oceans cry, and renew with great try try try

& meanwhile, the human child of earth, of earth

        learns grief, & learns release