He said I ought to be outside with other lads of my age building a bonfire. I told him that I was too old for such paganistic rituals. He said he was forty-seven and still enjoyed a good burn-up. – The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾
Bonfire!
Yesterday, amongst the glorious delights of the semi-rural splendour of my beloved’s land, we had a bonfire. This was partly practical – a lot of branches and leaves to burn before summer – and partly communal-spiritual. All in all, it was a jolly good time 
It was one of those events that despite just a few days notice took hold of people’s minds and souls and droves of them came with energy and verve to celebrate and commune.
There is no tradition of Bonfire Night in most of modern Australia. November is a bit warm and the bush fire risk too high for Australian’s to be parading around guys, begging for pennies and setting effigies alight on mounds of wood. However, the midwinter time around July in Perth is perfect for such an event. I did make a guy, to represent the generic evil nature, placed within it all sorts of talismans and methods of transformation, and took it around the traps to collect the communal negative energy. Come Sunday it was fairly reeking and I was a little uncomfortable driving for an hour with it in the back seat.
Because kids here are unfamiliar with such mock ritual sacrifice, we placed the guy within the fire not on top, to avoid reactions and dismay. I was still glad to see the thing burn though, transforming the negative energy it’d collected and distilled.
Out Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Ven. Thupten Lodey, came with plenty of home grown Juniper to consecrate and cleanse the fire. He ritually blessed it and people cast images and symbols of their own negativities into the pyre and watched them burn away. In the presence of fire the kids reverted to stock, turned primal and raced off into the bush to do what kids do. Later they returned from the dark for a feast of delicious homemade soups and breads in the best hearty-gourmet tradition, prepared by my beloved.
Jam Roly Poly
We continued to honour the British tradition and the ancestors of many of those present with simple no-nonsense rice pudding and Jam Roly Poly made with fresh suet from the local organic butchers. Suet is another jettisoned British tradition, and many folk had no idea what it was. I think some of them may have preferred it when they didn’t know
Such simple acts of communal activity and easy ritual are not only wonderful but essential for our lives and connections. It was a joyous event, one that was transformational without fuss and nurturing without pretence. After all, everyone loves a good burn-up
"We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured." ~
“A religion without a goddess is halfway to atheism” ~
How does my spiritual practice and daily life serve the earth?
How does my spiritual practice and daily life affect the poorest third of humanity?
How will my spiritual practice and daily life affect the generations to come in the future?
"It is through your body that you realize you are a spark of divinity."
“For most of us, however, we only think seriously of food or sex or money when it becomes a problem, which is to say when we feel we are not getting our share. When we find ourselves in that situation then I regret to say that meditational visualisations are really not the best way to remedy the lack. … We are here in a physical condition in a physical world and while in that state we have to abide by the laws appropriate to it.”
"The biblical texts have been strained out through a Greek/Latin mindset, which is very surface and static. I sometimes think it would have actually have been better if Western culture had based so called "Western religion" on Greek philosophy, rather than middle-eastern, because then at least you'd have all one thing. It would be eternally consistent. But what we have now is sort of half of each. And you're left with a basically schizophrenic tradition." 
"Can a horse tell you what it means to be human? How can a horse get beyond the boundaries of being a horse and say what it means to be human? Why do we think a human being can say what it means to be God? And yet we’ve done that; we’ve done that and we said that we’ve got it so right that if you don’t believe it we’ll burn you at the stake. That’s a very strange idea." ~
