Been thinkin’ about…Burnt wood prayer

The full wolf moon rises slowly in the early evening’s eastern sky. Last light of day and the Ozarks are shades of rust and umber, red and lemon yellow, the sky that pale creamy blue of early winter. Too daylight yet for stars. Only the moon can be seen, also pale and creamy and massive, as it tugs on the tides and calls to the coyotes in the fields out beyond the high school. In the rise of the full moon, there is yet a sense of rotation, of our movement in the celestial seas.

The windows are wide, the floor warm. Memories take hold. For many years this was my place of solace, of quiet, of challenge — the aspen-toned space overlooking Lake Taneycomo and Mount Branson — aspen-toned and very hot. This was the space I went to find myself, over and over, a space likely least expected for a “writer of the history and the Ozarks.” The smell of holy wood, Palo Santo, drifts in the heated air. I breathe deeply again.

Culture is forever shifting, forever refining and redefining. The strong cultures are the ones that still hold shape and sense and soul through the changes. And flexibility helps. Flexibility but not weakness, not apathy, not getting lost in false tradition, old pastiche. I came to the Ozarks because of the values, because of the music, the food, the faith and a dialect that sounded and felt like home. I came to the Ozarks because there was something here resistant to the soulless push of the outside world. But time takes its toll. Sometimes the things that look most like a culture are hollow and only time will tell the truth.

The aspen-hot room is crowded but I am alone, and happy. The smell of the holy wood burning is still in the air, reminding of ancient things of our shared past, things that transcend argument or background or even what I will have to buy at the Dollar General on my way home. People sometimes speak of the Ozarks as magical, referencing the waters or the quartz crystal limestone, the deep caves, or the mountain ridges. Look too closely, too cynically, and all that can be argued away, just “things” that have no magnetic pull on our souls. But here, in my breath and between the mountain and the moon, the truth is different, beyond argument. These Ozarks are special, even now, and there are drumbeats and a humming that calls from beyond time and place. Ancient mysticism isn’t lost when you’re quiet enough.

Culture comes in many forms, guided more often by pragmatism than by museum or public grant. Sometimes we still carry buckeyes in our pockets, still plant by the moon, still obey the laws of superstition and luck that were, luckily, written down by the big names of Ozarks lore, names like Randolph or Rayburn. This lore formed the backbone of “hillbilly” tourist culture, superstitious mountain folk wise enough to know something the rest of us didn’t. My grandpa would give me a buckeye every now and then, and I was wise enough to know it was good luck.

Lore changes but pragmatism doesn’t. Yes, dig into our culture and you still find our farmers, our craftsman, our historians, our fiddle players. But in a world simultaneously commercialized and increasingly impoverished, you find your hippie hipsters, your rock climbers, your paddle boarders, and your yoga communities, a next generation with a hand on a mandala and an eye on the moon. These were the kids who grew up with Arkansas diamonds tucked into their pockets and rocks piled on their bookshelves. These are the kids, now all grown up, with Lord Huron and Raign and Taylor Swift and Chris Stapleton on their playlists. This is culture too.

Every so often, yoga gets called demonic, evil, and a few other epithets as well, often by well-meaning conservatives who don’t carry Arkansas diamonds around in their pockets. I often seem to confuse folks because I am a well-meaning conservative for the most part, but one who has practiced yoga for years, having begun practice as a way to deal with mounting depression after my mom passed. Others treated their clinical issues with prescription drugs or too much food. I treated mine with movement and breath and meditation. For one whole year, I would retreat into the darkness of Shavasana (aptly meaning “Corpse Pose”) and cry quietly to myself, even as I could faintly hear my English friend Janice’s soft accent as she led the class through end-of-practice meditation.

The internal landscape of an ignored psyche can be a terrifying place. I still contend more than one good modern Westerner has ventured into their own inner caves during a meditation like this and then ran away screaming, convinced they had encountered demons. In reality, they just found themselves and that can be too much to bear. Far better to have the enemies be “out there, somewhere” than living so close to home. Far better to shove down the emotions, the thoughts, satiate them with more food, more drugs, and lie to ourselves about how good we are, than to face ourselves honestly. Truth is, we got problems. Truth is, this reality is surprisingly Christian, even as it is uncomfortable.

In a world of physical and energetic clutter, of the constant need for approval from others, and that strange din that comes from whatever passes as modern space these days, we avoid the internal journey at our own peril. But as with all good journeys, this one is not easy, nor should it be. The archetypal terrain, the Jungian space from which our dreams arise, is the same space we share with the great stories and myths of old, stories of heroes and maidens, wise wizards, faithful sidekicks, evil witches and world-ending dragons. The better we understand the myths inside us, the better we understand ourselves. And the more we realize we are more than the sum of our parts, as is the world. We do have meaning, purpose and heroic journeys yet again.

The smell of the sacred wood drifts again in the studio. The moon has risen, the sky darkened. The river lake is calm, reflecting a creamy pale blue sky and reddish oak bluffs. The aspen-hot room is a cool 102 degrees. There is a puddle of sweat on my mat, a cool peppermint towel on my face. The Ozarks are born again, anew, with each new night, each new day, each new moon, each new sun, just as the Creator made it to be. I whisper my own burnt wood prayer into the sky above, grateful, again.