Tending Fire

A tribute to the lodge firekeeper

The Lodge, Chacala, Mexico

As I’ve been working with the fire element this month, I’ve been leaning in to the areas of fire that have been meaningful for me. Tempering my resistance to this element. Reflecting on encounters with fire that leave me filled up, rather than dry and spent. A re-tooling of my relationship to fire.

As part of this this, I can’t help but speak to my love of ceremony centered around the sweat lodge. I was blessed to be introduced to Lakota lodge ways some 20 years ago, though I now look back on that first experience and realize that it was choreographed for us white folk. The fire, heat and steam kept small so we didn’t perish upon meeting a ceremony so unfamiliar.

It was only when I started to sit in lodge in Mexico about 10 years ago that I came to know lodge in what felt like a more authentic expression. One led by a young Mexican man who blended Aztec and Lakota traditions into a form of lodge that felt like home to me.