Eric Auton
The logs are crackling and splitting in the wood burner. The door is wide open to draft the flames.
My three dogs sleep contentedly while I tidy up the mayhem in the kitchen, caused the night before, by opening a single tin of soup.
The rich logs of the camphor tree grow deep red, warming us and providing hot water.
Tinker has asked me to let her loose in the paddock and on the mice.
I love my morning ritual of lighting the kindling and choosing the twigs. The little flames make such a fitting welcome for a chilly, Waikato dawn.
Such simple, domestic luxuries make me feel a pain for so many, who have had so little, for so long.
Another mug of tea. Another log.
Certain obediences – (stacking, splitting, storing, presenting firewood from respected and loved trees) result in a blessing I hope we share, or imagine: a warm kitchen.
In our relationship to Our Father, He blesses us so profoundly when we snuggle up to His loving warmth of His caring.
He encourages us to be obedient to His expectations: starting by our kindness to strangers. His Holy fire is not sent to blister and incinerate us for our bad choices and don’t I make ’em!
His Holy fire purifies us so gently that we can begin to feel a cold heart warming and blackness turning to amber, red and then gold.
One of the joys of living on Te Kawa Road, is to watch our Earth tilt so that the sun seems to lift its flames behind the shelter belts. They catch fire. Careful, Eric! That is exactly what is happening in an unsheltered belt across parts of boiling Europe.
It is fascinating to think about how words may become so familiar to us that we begin to decode them as lies. For example: the sun has never risen. The sun has never gone behind the clouds and if the sun were to set at dusk, how could it be released to rise reliably for the next Waikato dawn?
The Victorians were extremely adept at speaking and writing about Our Father in Heaven as being able to send us into the fiery furnace or being able to cast us down with thunderbolts. We were obviously clever at using fire and brimstone to maintain control, as St Catherine found out when she witnessed in the flesh the invention of the Catherine Wheel.
Why would our Father be so capricious as to destroy His ultimate creation, when we can know He had a rescue plan for all of us sinners?
