The Bee’s Knees
They say God comes to us disguised as our life. We are allowed to understand this concept via the workings of the central organizing intelligence of our heart. Along with the heart’s neuromuscular pumping function, this more intangible aspect of heart’s function makes our lives possible.
In particular moments of experiential awareness we are drawn into ineffable states of knowing tangible aspects of Source, our true identity. I refer to such refreshing and meaningful experiences as The Bee’s Knees.
The Bee’s Knees, a term used to signify anything that is of the highest excellence, has been around since the 1920’s. My son expounded further on the meaning of the term, “The Bee’s Knees actually refers to bee’s knees, which are the receptacle for pollen and the mode of transport for such. That is why it is used metaphorically to indicate something of excellence. Also, The Bee’s Knees is a cocktail, and a delicious one, in which fresh lavender and honey are mixed into syrup with hot water, which is then allowed to cool and subsequently is mixed with gin and fresh lemon juice over ice. It is delicious, and I often order it at establishments of the level of quality where one would expect such a fine drink.”
I had a Bee’s Knees experience when I attended a funeral ceremony sponsored by The Crestone End of Life Project (CEOLP) for my friend and client Andy, who passed peacefully at his home a few days prior. One of Andy’s personal passions was assisting in a unique service which is offered in our small community; open air cremation of the deceased.
CEOLP is a non denominational community based group of kind people who promote informed end-of-life choices for individuals, their family members, and loved ones. CEOLP helps support the fulfillment of these choices. Crestone, Colorado is the only community in America which offers open air cremation to its inhabitants as one option of compassionate care for the body of the deceased. One has to have lived here for at least 3 months in order to be entitled to receive this beautiful service upon passing on. CEOLP has been years in the making of many improvements, as well as obligatory county and EPA legal approvals.
A group of more than 30 had gathered beside a gravel pathway at 7AM on a cold morning. Snow clouds were gathering and a steady stiff wind blew in from the south. I wore a sheepskin hat, warm boots, and everything rip-stop and Carhartt in between. The fire and bone tender, a slender elder lady of elegance and stature, named Stephanie, wore camo pants stuffed into boots. It’s Crestone Casual. No one had dressed to the nines.
We lined up along either side of a 5 foot wide gravel pathway, where each of us was handed a juniper bough. A small pick-up truck arrived; bearing a group of men in the cargo bay flanking a simple handmade wooden stretcher bearing Andy’s washed and tightly shrouded body. These men were the pallbearers, and two of them were Andy’s sons. The litter was borne up the gravel walkway. We all fell in line behind it, the wind at our backs.
The procession approached a circular enclosure, entering its gated north side. The enclosure was created by stretches of colored screen cloth mounted on tall wooden fence postings. This screening acted as a wind break, allowing a sense of enclosure, closeness, and privacy.
The pyre is constructed of foam brick Aeroblock, lined on its inside with fire brick, and on its outside with a simple stucco coating. It is 4 feet wide by 8 feet in length, and stands 3-4 feet high. The firewood is fed in from both of the open long ends, as well as from 2 smaller feed ports located midway along each side of the pyre’s walls.
The grate which receives the litter is constructed of cross pieces of 2 inch cast iron, locally welded. The grate is made in 3 pieces which allows for easier removal owing to the weight factor of 260 pounds of metal. The metal cross pieces begin to bow enough after the heat of about 8 cremations that the whole grate assembly must be replaced anew. The grate stands about 2 feet off the ground. Beneath the grate, lengths of wood are carefully arranged.
The litter was slid onto the grate, and each of us placed our juniper boughs on top of Andy’s shrouded body. We then gathered pieces of pinon and lodgepole pine and covered his body with these logs.
We stepped back a distance of about 6 feet to the outer side of a rock circle which girdles the pyre, and inside of which are stacks of logs for the efficient fire tenders who constantly monitor the fire. The odors of sage and incense circle about. The ceremony embraces all spiritual paths in its simple solemnity and practicality and tradition.
An ambience of dignity, power, awe and respect unfolds, and is embraced by the wind. Andy’s sons step forward holding torches ablaze. With tender courage they place the torches into the logs beneath the body of their father. The pyre is kindled, the logs begin to combust, and the flame and smoke are announced to the persistent wind which carries the smoky ethereal signature to the north.
The body of the deceased is completely covered with logs, and cannot be discerned beneath the wood which discretely covers all. I stand at the open end of the pyre where the head is resting, watching the darkened smoke of carbonaceous particulate matter rise up. It has no time to linger with us, as the wind hurries it along in a billowing stream.
People who knew Andy begin to speak about his life, and offer readings. I am reduced out of thoughts as my eyes fill with tears, awestruck as my heart expands. The skull becomes visible through some parted logs, glowing white in an orange blaze. The fire tenders gently cover this with more logs. Vertebrae and other bony elements fall through the grates, released in the fire’s power, unrestrained by former flesh connections which are transformed into the gaseous counterpart, moving along up the valley in a steady stream.
I scan my inner psychic and physical terrain, witnessing my feelings and thoughts, breathing in and out to the ongoing silent mantra in the breath of my life. I am immersed. A friend named Guy, who also assists with the CEOLP project, steps forward to speak with me.
Guy simply begins talking about cremations in India where wood is a relatively scarce item, resulting in expensive cremations which often are not completed since money and firewood only go so far. I come out of my meditation, registering the commentary of my friend with the thought of how fortunate we Crestonians are in so many simple ways.
It takes about a third of a cord of wood to complete a cremation at 8000 feet above sea level. A cord of wood is a tight packed pile measuring 8 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet, or, 128 cubic feet of wood; a useful bit of knowledge when contemplating one’s winter home heat requirements, or a 3-4 hour completion of an open air cremation.
I look about at those who have gathered to offer respect and love. People congregate in small groups, talking to each other in low tones, gazing into the fire which is lovingly tended. While being aware of the context of the present event, they speak simply about ordinary things. Pieces of bones are pulled into the growing bed of coals, falling through the grates under gravity’s pull.
It is another gathering and opportunity to have an organic Crestone conversation about anything on one’s mind. Andy was like that. He also cried with me, opening his Grief Box in his final days, as his regrets arose to be released.
People move closer in towards the warmth of the fire. Snow clouds are gathering; the wind is biting. I cinch up my scarf and hat. Our group draws in towards the warmth of the fire, and we celebrate a liberated life.
As loved ones offer their words and readings, I ponder a recent quandary in my own life, while silently witnessing fire, bones, cold, warmth, spoken words, and my feet in my boots, my warm head covering, and the flow of tears coming from my eyes. The sky is about to release white flakes of snow downward. The pyre is about to release white flakes of ash upward.
I ponder my quandary. It is a question about what is the best way to gain the trust and friendship of a family to whom I had extended myself over the past several years, only to be met with impasse. How can I gain their trust and friendship to “loosen the knots of their hearts?” I offer this question into the wind.
Another friend comes forward. Philip and I stand close to the fire. He is a local physician, a very kind and sensitive middle aged Jewish gentleman who wears thick eyeglasses. His perspicuity is all the more enhanced by an important observation of something which is occurring with the skeletal remains of the deceased.
In the place where some of the long bones of the left arm are exposed, one of the bones makes its way through the grates. Philip urgently announces, “Oh, it looks like a long bone!” With this remarkable pronouncement from one physician to another, I arise from my reverie into full mundane waking consciousness.
His comment carries the feeling of an “Ah Ha!” moment of knowing comingled with a morbid curiosity. The comment felt neither insensitive, nor out of place or context. This is Crestone, after all, and we are outside cremating a body. Philip’s spontaneous release adds into the organic wholeness of the moment.
He and I had journeyed through medical schools to learn how to observe and offer educated opinions about anatomical technicalities. For physicians there is a time and a place for the definition of all matters of the flesh. I laugh inwardly at myself. I am thinking too much in a past paradigm.
I walk to the other end of the pyre where Andy’s feet once lay. Stephanie is stooping down to collect some foot and ankle fragments from the hot ash pile with a miniature garden rake. She rakes bone fragments into a pile, and then collects this pile with an ordinary dustpan. The crumbly pieces are then taken aside and added to a growing pile of similar remains to be given to the family the next day.
Another CEOLP assistant comes forward. His name is Paul, a transplanted northern European. He is a giant wrapped in a shawl. I welcome Paul because he is a giant wrapped in a shawl, and he speaks openly from his heart. A giant wrapped in a shawl who speaks from its Heart is a comfort at a cremation on a cold day.
He speaks with Andy’s sons and me about the pyre’s construction, the Aeroblock, the grates, and the ongoing upkeep process. It was Paul who studied how to perform open air cremations some 12 years ago in distant places, and it is he who brought this knowledge and experience into the Crestone End of Life Project.
The growing pile of coals is tended and pushed into the center of the pyre. Only a few long bones remain on the grate. More logs are added on to help the process along. Having lost touch with anatomical nomenclature, a mode of my past, I now feel unencumbered by the types of fabricated shackles we create in our life journey. In the simple dignity of this fiery release, I am inwardly refreshed.
The wind has completely stilled. Snow is falling straight down. White ash from the fire has accumulated, and is rising straight up. The white ash flakes and the snowflakes are up to a full centimeter in diameter; large and obvious. About 4 feet above the final resting place where Andy’s intact body once lay, the ash and snowflakes merge into each other. Snowflake and ash vanish into a portal of nothingness above the pyre, at a height right at my eye level.
The fire’s heat is melting the snow onto the ash, and the fine ash is being dissolved by the snowflake’s watery counterpart. I am immersed in a knowing of the inseparable and diaphanous nature of everything around me. In the background are the strong 14,000 Sangre de Cristo peaks. I am grounded. All is quiet as cosmic tumblers click. My prior question drifts. I sense an answer presciently, immanently. My heart is fully open as I gaze into the zone of airspace where ash and snowflake disappear into one another.
A Bee’s Knees moment is arriving in my consciousness as an ineffable silent eternity of a moment of truth.
We experience these moments in our journey, but we consciously know so little of their full mystery, born as theyare inside of the chambers of our Heart. Definitions, judgments, scintillations of meaning, left brain rationalized responses, the limitations of words, our life efforts, are all offered up from the fire of our lives like the ash floating upward to Father Sky.
Down come the snowflakes from Father Sky, and where the two meet is born an empty essence of a moment of creative eternity; the Mother. She constantly recreates Herself to know Herself through Her own Creation.
From this captivating silence a presence from my past makes his voice heard inside my being: “You absorbed and integrated what we showed you. It is now yours to own, and yours to give. Offer your gift. Your people will come forward, and seek you out as you become yourself.”
Is it any wonder? Quandary resolved. How simple. Just be myself and offer what I have assimilated. I thought I had been doing that, but the advice implied that more simplicity is in order. And so it is, word is made flesh.
I had not traveled to ashram, temple, or mosque; nor had I climbed a mountain seeking the Master in his cave of knowing. I had not retreated into the wilderness, nor had I fasted and cleansed myself. The solution to my quandary only required unconditional presence at a special ceremony and openness at a moment of knowing.
The observation of ash and snowflake merging into one served to stop my brain mind thinking long enough for the heart mind to deliver its wisdom. This central theme of this meditative wisdom is expressed in Patangali’s Yoga Sutras, number 2: “Yoga chitti vritti nirodha.”
The purpose of Yoga is to still the thought waves of the Mind.
We channel Divine creative consciousness through the heart. This Consciousness, from which all things arise, goes by many names. The mysteries of Source are known in the chambers of our heart, where breath merges into our flesh.
In those moments when what seems to appear as separate forms merge into one, we can know our essence.
The ash and snow, merging into one, is how God showed up, disguised as what I refer to as a Bee’s Knees life experience.
As is stated at www.CrestoneEndofLifeProject.org, “The Art of Living Well, and the Art of Dying Well, are One.”
Signing off from Crestone and Beyond.
Wishin you the best that Life and Love have to offer.