Excerpts from "Embers", by Richard Wagamese
Richard Wagamese’s book, Embers, is one of the few books I keep returning to for its accessible wisdom. My gift to you this holiday season, is a sampling of his wisdom. I’ve chosen two of his writings from each of the seven sections in his book: Stillness, Harmony, Trust, Reverence, Persistence, Gratitude, and Joy. May we all carry a sprinkling of these with us wherever we go.
Stillness
Sometimes people just need to talk. They need to be heard. They need the validation of my time, my silence, my unspoken compassion. They don’t need advice, sympathy or counselling. They need to hear the sound of their own voices, speaking their own truths, articulating their own feelings, as those may be at a particular moment. Then, when they’re finished, they simply need a nod of the head, a pat on the shoulder or a hug. I’m learning that sometimes silence really is golden, and that sometimes “Fuck, eh?” is as spiritual thing as needs to be said.
- Pg 21*
I am constantly surrounded by noise: TV, texts, the internet, music, meaningless small talk, my thinking. All of it blocks my consciousness, my ability to hear the ME that exists beneath the cacophony. I am my consciousness, my awareness of my circumstance, my presence in every moment. So I cultivate silence every morning. I sit in it, bask in it, wrap it around myself, and hear and feel me. Then, wherever the day takes me, the people I meet are the beneficiaries of my having taken that time—they get the real me, not someone shaped and altered by the noise around me. Silence is the stuff of life.
- Pg 25
Harmony
ME: Why am I alive?
OLD WOMAN: Because everything else is.
ME: No. I mean the purpose.
OLD WOMAN: That is the purpose. To learn about your relatives.
ME: My family?
OLD WOMAN: Yes. The moon, stars, rocks, trees, plants, water, insects, birds, mammals. Your whole family. Learn about that relationship. How you’re moving through time and space together. That’s why your alive.
- Pg 41
Like most of us do, I spent a lot of time trying to compress things into a context I could accept. That was hard work, and it meant I was alone most of the time. Nowadays, I figure life is pretty simple: Creator is everywhere and divine light shines through everything and everyone all the time. My work is to look for that light. In those fleeting, glorious instances when I see it, I am made more, right then, right there.
- Pg 43
Trust
ME: Sometimes, when things are hardest, it feels like Creator’s not listening.
OLD WOMAN: Creator can do whatever Creator chooses. When we are in doubt or confusion or fear, She could sends us thunderbolts or lightning or a huge pile of unexpected cash. But most of the time, she sends people. People are the miracles that emerge from the ripped and worn pattern of your life and help you stich it back together. You learn to see pattern better then.
- Pg 59
You can’t test your courage timidly. You have to run through the fire, arms waving, legs pumping and heart beating wildly with the effort of reclaiming something vital, lost, laid aside, or just plain forgotten. When you do that, you discover that we shine most brightly in community, the whole bedraggled, worn, frayed and tattered lot of us, bound together forever by a shared courage, a family forged in the heat of earnest struggle.
- Pg 76
Reverence
For you today, my friends, I raise sacred smoke. For you who are troubled, confused, doubtful, lonely, afraid, addicted, unwell, bothered or alone, I raise sacred smoke. For those of you in sorrow, grief or pain, I raise sacred smoke. For those who work for people, for change, for spiritual evolution, for the upward and outward growth of our common humanity and the wellbeing of our planet, I raise sacred smoke. For those of you in joy, in the glow of small or great triumphs, who live in love, faith, courage and respect, I raise sacred smoke. And, in the act of all of tis, I raise it also for myself.
- Pg 86
Wake and watch the universe shrug itself into wakefulness, and night surrenders slowly to day and shadow relinquishes itself to light. I watch this display and realize that the moon lives in the lining of my skin, the sun rises with my consciousness, and the earth thrums in the bottom of my feet. Everywhere I go, I take that sense of wonder and mystery with me.
- Pg 90
Persistence
Life is sometimes hard. There are challenges. There are difficulties. There is pain. As a younger man, I sought to avoid pain and difficulty and only caused myself more of the same. These days, I choose to face life head-on—and I have become a comet. I arc across the sky of my life and the hard times are the friction that shaves off the worn and tired bits. The more I travel head-on, the more I am shaped, and the things that no longer work or are unnecessary drop away. It’s a good way to travel. I believe eventually I will wear away all resistance, until all that’s left of me is light.
- Pg 133
ME: When are things going to get easier?
OLD WOMAN: They already are.
ME: Doesn’t feel like it. I keep waiting for Creator to step in.
OLD WOMAN: She already has. She always will. Keep faith burning in your heart.
ME: I have. I’ve been waiting for things to change.
OLD WOMAN: Faith isn’t about waiting for things to change. Faith is the constant effort to keep pushing through.
ME: What’s on the other side?
OLD WOMAN: You.
- Pg 134
Gratitude
I walk with the scars of a lifetime of living. Some were self-inflicted wounds. Some were caused by others. Either way, they mark the trajectory of sic decades of experience with the ins and outs, ups and downs, doubts and certainties of my relationship with living. They mark the territory of my being. I don’t regret a single one of them now. In fact, I’m thankful for them. My scars have the strange ability to remind me that my past was real, and what is real offers knowledge, understanding and an ultimate forgiveness.
- Pg 147
Missing someone is feeling a piece of your heart gone astray. Sure, it keeps beating, and sure you keep breathing, but there’s a gap in the rhythm of it, an din the rhythm of the everyday things around you. You seem to move a little les gracefully. But you still move, and that’s the critical thing. Because missing someone doesn’t mean things grind to a halt. Instead, it means you move out of gratitude for the gift of their presence in your life. You move to keep experiencing, to keep confronting life head-on, so that your return allows you to reunite with them as more human, more alive, more real.
- Pg 156
Joy
All we have are moments. So live them as though not one can be wasted. Inhabit them, fill them with the light of your best good intention, honour them with your full presence, find the joy, the calm, the assuredness that allows the hours and the days to take care of themselves. If we can do that, we will have lived.
- Pg 161
I’m not here in this life to be well balanced or admired. I’m here to be an oddball, eccentric, different, wildly imaginative, creative, daring, curious, inventive and even a tad strange at times. I’m here to pray and chant and meditate and sing and find Creator in a blues riff, a sunrise, a touch or the laughter of children. I’m here to discover ME in all of that. I’m here to add clunky, chunky and funky bits of me to the swirl and swagger and churn of life and living. It demands I be authentic. So when you look out at the world, that’s me dancing in the fields…
- Pg 165
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*Page numbers correspond to the paperback edition of Embers published by Douglas and McIntyre in 2016.