Hope in Burnt Offerings

A couple days ago, our local county conservation staff held an event that occurs regularly at this time of year: a prescribed burn of our prairie fen. Such burns generally blacken some portion of this beloved place across the street from our home, offering a scorched viewscape, often in stark contrast with the (as yet) golden, unburned portion. The fire is very real – it was still burning as I returned home from campus on Thursday, crackling and smoking away, the burn monitor patrolling in his bright green vest on his four-wheeler. The air will smell of ember and ash for days to come.

Often we find the animals in our yard – rabbits, hawks, a raccoon – sheltering in place there while the fen burns low. It gives me a warm sense of pride that our little patch of earth offers sanctuary for them. This year, a neighbor alerted my partner, a fen steward, that she was calling the county conservation district to complain on behalf of the animals. She was frightened for their well-being and angry at the injustice. Then, sometime later, she texted to report that she had spoken with a very nice man from the district, who had reassured her. We don’t know exactly what he said, of course. But we know that the pest weeds that spring up in the fen each year will be reduced to ash, and that the native flora – adapted to fire – will flourish after the burn, and so the butterflies and birds and beasts behind them. As of this morning, the bunnies are gone from our yard, doubtless back to their burrows. Yes, the landscape appears bleak for the moment – but in truth, the prairie needs to burn, so best to foster a fire in best weather, at a level and pace that will offer best chances for all life.

For me, the prairie burn is a regular lesson in hope. Especially this year, it seems, it is hard to look at the blackened earth and not feel a corresponding ashen-ness of spirit. It has been a hard, hard year for so many of my fellow-humans, some of them snatched away to face who-knows-what fate, some disappeared before our very eyes. Daily we learn of another assault on humanity, past and all-too-present. So much of what happens in the world unfolds without our intention or consent, and still we feel our complicity in it, like an ashen stain on the hands that is hard to rub, or even wash, away. Still and yet, I know the prairie needs to burn and, deep down, that new growth will one day – soon and very soon, I pray – spring from the ashes, nourished by what was released and utterly transformed. This is what hope looks like for me just now – blackened earth from which I know good things will grow, by and by. Nature teaches me that there is nothing so foul that goodness cannot arise from it. As I go about my day-to-day, looking at the enormity of need and my own insufficiency to address it, I am reminded that the earth is vast and ancient, and at its very essence is built and rebuilt from transformation. Change is, inevitably, coming. If we hold fast to one another, offering sanctuary in its advent, that will be the blessing of its arrival.