The Smoke, the Prayer, the Name

I watch the smudge stick burning its sage and lavender scented leaves, its falling ashes filling up my plain, earth-brown herb mixing-bowl. No matter that this small bowl I set aside especially reserved for mixing herbs and essential oils is today being used for burning prayers; its use varied in the earthly and the divine, but oh, how fine a line the two are being played out in my life of late.

As I watch the swirling smoke lines lifting into the air, separating and coming together and then separating again until the last lines of separaton dissipate and disappear high above the earthen bowl into unseen nostrils as real as the twine-bound twigs from which it came; my own whispered voice echoes many times over, “…he will add light…he will add light,” my only prayer.

And yes, he will add light to those dark recessed depths of the soul where light and dark always seem to battle. Where black and white whisperings fiercely collide until one fine moment in time a smudge is lit, a prayer is raised, and divine intervention breakes through to the battle-weary and when the dust and smoke settle, new light never before seen enlightens the battlefield displaying things dead and thing survived, and the survived encouraged, renewed.

Your very name, “Joseph” means “he will add;” a wiser birthname given you than the one your then three year old brother wished to pen you with—“The Amazing Mumford!” Although to your father and I you are that as well, at least, the amazing part.

Your second name “Aaron” means “light”; that which you are destined to journey in; a light of piercing illumination, a light you cannot escape from even should you desire to for hiding from sun is too difficult a try; hiding from the son impossible.

So I continue my smoke prayer, more, my name prayer, “Joseph Aaron…he will add light, Jospeth Aaron…he will add light.” This prayer I direct to you, so, and I know that as the illuminated path you walk enlightens those around you, it does so because he adds the light indeed, he is the light.

Joseph Aaron: your name becomes you…no, really, your name becomes you. Say it.

-Linda