![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Temple.
Aug. 17th, 2022 01:22 pmI, as most of you know, am not a very spiritual person. I'm a pretty vocal atheist, demand evidence for extraordinary claims, and having been raised on Star Trek and Carl Sagan, look for logical, scientific explanations for things.
Aside from my well-known superstitions surrounding baseball, there is one other place and time where I allow the barriers between me and the potential of a spirit world to drop. The burning of the Temple on the final night of Burning Man.
The Temple is always a work of art, and it is a place of remembrance of those who have left us in the past year. People write on the bare wood, staple pictures and farewells to the structure, and until the Pyramid Lake Paiute asked us to stop, people would even leave cremains in the Temple.
It has become a center of quiet reflection, or meditation, even if you just wander around reading the memorials, and looking at the gifts left behind, which range from the cryptic to the heartbreaking. I'll never forget the one I saw in 2017, I think. It was a photo of two US Marines in full battle rattle in Afghanistan. It was pinned to the wall by two Lance Corporal rank pins. Written next to the photo was the name of the deceased and "Goddamnit, we made it HOME! WHY??? The scary thing is I think I know the answer."
I must have stared at this for ten minutes with made plans to find this Marine scream with him, cry with him, get drunk with him, anything to share his pain.
That's the Temple. It is an emotional focus. And on the night after the Man burns, which is a raucous party, the temple burns. About 30-40,000 people turn out for that. And we sit in utter, reverent, silence as all those memories and memorials burn.
One year, I had to put up a memorial for Loren Wiseman, Traveller editor, writer, and guru. The man who gave me the contract for Ground Forces. As we watched the temple burn, I noticed one spark shooting straight up out of the inferno. "Look," I said with tears in my eyes, "there goes Loren, burning for the 100 diameter limit."
Sadly, we have two names to post this year, one of my aunts and a good friend who died suddenly of Covid. When the Temple burns, it will bring closure.
Aside from my well-known superstitions surrounding baseball, there is one other place and time where I allow the barriers between me and the potential of a spirit world to drop. The burning of the Temple on the final night of Burning Man.
The Temple is always a work of art, and it is a place of remembrance of those who have left us in the past year. People write on the bare wood, staple pictures and farewells to the structure, and until the Pyramid Lake Paiute asked us to stop, people would even leave cremains in the Temple.
It has become a center of quiet reflection, or meditation, even if you just wander around reading the memorials, and looking at the gifts left behind, which range from the cryptic to the heartbreaking. I'll never forget the one I saw in 2017, I think. It was a photo of two US Marines in full battle rattle in Afghanistan. It was pinned to the wall by two Lance Corporal rank pins. Written next to the photo was the name of the deceased and "Goddamnit, we made it HOME! WHY??? The scary thing is I think I know the answer."
I must have stared at this for ten minutes with made plans to find this Marine scream with him, cry with him, get drunk with him, anything to share his pain.
That's the Temple. It is an emotional focus. And on the night after the Man burns, which is a raucous party, the temple burns. About 30-40,000 people turn out for that. And we sit in utter, reverent, silence as all those memories and memorials burn.
One year, I had to put up a memorial for Loren Wiseman, Traveller editor, writer, and guru. The man who gave me the contract for Ground Forces. As we watched the temple burn, I noticed one spark shooting straight up out of the inferno. "Look," I said with tears in my eyes, "there goes Loren, burning for the 100 diameter limit."
Sadly, we have two names to post this year, one of my aunts and a good friend who died suddenly of Covid. When the Temple burns, it will bring closure.
