The image of Moses before the burning bush has stayed with me since my childhood, and reared up as a life enhancing visionary experience many years later in the midst of a Zen retreat. Words spoken from the fire, being of course, close to the source of all poetry. The photograph was taken out with friends in the African Bush, the fire, the landscape and the chatter of all the creatures of that world welcoming the night still live on in my mind. DW
This is such a lovely passage, David, one that I have carried with me for many years through long and dusty paths, reminding myself at every turn, “Take your shoes off. You are standing on holy ground.”
I never really thought about this story much when I read it over and over as a kid. I just thought how unlikely, honestly. I must have been in too literal a mindset. I am in this so much right now though. Everything was just destroyed, totally leveled. And I’m looking at it now understanding how brilliant that destruction is. And I have a distaste for words that puzzles me.
The image of Moses before the burning bush has stayed with me since my childhood, and reared up as a life enhancing visionary experience many years later in the midst of a Zen retreat. Words spoken from the fire, being of course, close to the source of all poetry. The photograph was taken out with friends in the African Bush, the fire, the landscape and the chatter of all the creatures of that world welcoming the night still live on in my mind. DW
This poem feels like one of those moments when something ancient and powerful brushes against your life.
I love how Whyte turns Moses’s encounter with the burning earth into something we can all recognise.
There’s a sense that once you’ve felt that kind of fire, you can’t go back to moving through the world blindly.
Every step becomes careful, almost reverent, as if the ground itself were paying attention.
The poem captures that trembling pause when revelation strips everything down to what’s real.
I can feel the struggle to speak when language suddenly feels too small for what you’ve seen.
The shift to the image of a home reduced to ashes is heartbreaking, yet strangely honest.
It suggests that sometimes life has to burn through what we cling to before a new path appears.
The final image of the world turning into a single branch of flame is haunting and oddly comforting.
It leaves you with the sense that transformation often begins in the quiet ruins of what you thought would last.
I love this…my whole life this fire has consumed my small mind burning its taught fake story! This poem I recently wrote describes my true soul story!
When I live from me Soul,
from loving divine presence
within, my senses shift to see,
taste, hear, touch and feel
and know differently!
I’ve stepped off the edge
into and upon another path!
The birdsongs still sing, the
winds still blow my hair, my
biting into the apple sweeter
and feeling your arms around
me from within melts away
all fear to give to me Divine
Love I Am!
Whispers come, I think about
you all the time! We are now
forever together upon our
path home…follow our Love!
This is such a lovely passage, David, one that I have carried with me for many years through long and dusty paths, reminding myself at every turn, “Take your shoes off. You are standing on holy ground.”
Makes me think of the things I let go of so something new can come along. Beautiful poem.
What beautiful words, I could feel my emotion and a recognition bubbling up from somewhere deep within myself.
Fireplace
flavorful smoke
Reading Donald Kalshed’s
The Inner World of Trauma
Put the ashes out
Sun is setting
On MLK day
House is blazing
9 months later
Move back in
Custom remodel
Now a Home
Phoenix rose
… “Like the moment you too saw, for the first time, your own house turned to ashes. Everything consumed so the road could open again.” From
https://davidwhyte.substack.com/p/fire-in-the-earth-b4b
amazing transformative
"He never recovered
his complicated way of loving again
and was free to love in the same way
he felt the fire licking at his heels loved him."
May we all have experiences that free us to love in new ways.
Ways inspired by experiences with the Great Mystery.
To bring the ancient wisdom into the new world helps make sense of the whole life on Earth. Thank you for the bridge.
I never really thought about this story much when I read it over and over as a kid. I just thought how unlikely, honestly. I must have been in too literal a mindset. I am in this so much right now though. Everything was just destroyed, totally leveled. And I’m looking at it now understanding how brilliant that destruction is. And I have a distaste for words that puzzles me.
What a fabulous photograph, it had me mesmerised staring at it for quite a while and had me tapping into deeper thoughts.
The poem also stirred up some sort of historic resonance or recognition.