19 August 2025 - Tuesday The Fire That Remembers the Land - Part 5 A Ceremony of Perception, Memory, and Renewal within Kimoon K’uxlaal

19 August 2025 - Tuesday

The Fire That Remembers the Land - Part 5

A Ceremony of Perception, Memory,

and Renewal within Kimoon K’uxlaal

“I Carry the Mountain in My Breath”

A Ceremonial Introduction to Living Within Two Lands

from the Earth Remembers Series

The Old Ways of Fire

I have walked in Maya villages where the old ways still breathe.

I have seen the smoke rise from low, cool fires

set in the hours when the wind is still,

the air moist,

and the heat of day softened.

These fires are not rage;

they are medicine.

Maya farmers have tended their forests like this

for over five thousand years —

since the last ice melted and the tropics were born anew.

They burn not to destroy,

but to nourish the soil,

to encourage plants that heal and feed,

to create habitats for animals and pollinators,

to keep the balance of the forest’s diversity.

In California, the Chumash, the Mono,

the Karuk, and hundreds of other peoples

lit fires as carefully as one would tend a child’s first step.

Some burned brush every fifty years

to invite meadows where elk would graze.

Others burned every two or three years

to open the conifer forests

so berries, roots, and medicinal greens

could grow in the dappled light.

The smoke would drift, carrying spores,

seeding life across the land

as ocean currents carry fish.

These were cultural fire regimes —

fires shaped by human hands and ancient eyes,

woven into the land’s cycles

until the land itself came to depend on them.

Here is where the truth lives:

pyrodiversity is tied to biodiversity.

The many forms of fire

nourish the many forms of life.

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When the Fire Was Taken

But colonization sought to break this weaving.

The first Spanish governors in California

called Indigenous burning “childish,”

criminalized it,

and with that act

cut the roots of Indigenous food systems.

To remove a people’s fire

is to remove their sovereignty,

their sustenance,

their relationship to the land.

By the mid-19th century,

the United States banned Indigenous fire use

and waged open campaigns of genocide.

The land that had been lit with care for ten thousand years

was silenced.

Without fire, the landscapes grew sick.

Forests thickened with deadfall.

Pests and disease spread.

When flames finally returned,

they came as catastrophe —

consuming towns, killing countless beings,

and sending walls of smoke

around the whole earth.

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Voice 1 — The First Reaction

When the fire comes now,

Voice 1 cries out:

“Stop it! Put it out!

It is destruction! It is loss!”

I see the blackened trees,

the fleeing animals,

the homes turned to ash.

I feel fear coil in my chest,

the old grief of seeing

something beautiful consumed.

Voice 1 searches for someone to blame,

someone to hold responsible.

Voice 1 does not yet see the long weaving.

It sees only the wound.

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The Heart Within Voice 1 — Guided by Nawal Mosbel Joloom

And here,

the presence of Nawal Mosbel Joloom enters —

Sweeper of the Skull, Liberator of Memory —

she who clears the mind’s smoke

so the deeper light can return.

She walks with the Bundle of the Martin,

woven with the wisdom of Rilaj Maam,

carrying the long memory of the land.

Her sweeping is gentle but firm.

She touches the heart within Voice 1,

and says:

“Look again, not with the eyes of panic,

but with the eyes that remember.

The fire is not only an ending —

it is a beginning.

Not all flames are the same.

Some are the Creator’s gift,

to paint meadows,

to renew oak groves,

to free seeds from their hard shells.”

With her guidance,

Voice 1 softens.

The smoke in the mind thins.

I begin to see

that the fire’s story is older than my fear.

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Voice 2 — The Emergence of Understanding

Here, the light inside me begins to rise.

I remember that in many places,

without the right fire,

the food systems collapse,

the animals leave,

the waters grow scarce.

I remember that the heart within the land

knows when to burn,

and how,

and for what purpose.

I begin to feel the reciprocity —

how fire is a gift to the land,

as much as water is a gift to the seed.

I begin to trust

that the fire, in its right form,

is part of Kimoon K’uxlaal —

the weaving of many into one heart.

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Voice 3 — The Wholeness Restored

In the end,

I stand again as Nab’eysiil,

keeper of the Bundle of the Martin,

with the fire at my side —

not as enemy,

but as ally.

I remember that the wholeness we seek

is not the absence of fire,

but the restoration of its rightful place.

When the fire is lit with respect,

it carries the heart within light

into the soil, the seed, the stream.

It paints the hills with new colors.

It calls the deer and the elk,

the fungi and the berries,

the eagles and the salmon.

It weaves the land and the people

back into one living heart.

And so I walk forward

with the remembering

that the fire that remembers the land

is the fire that remembers us —

and that its light,

woven with ours,

can seed the next seven generations

in beauty and in balance.

The Fire That Remembers the Land

A Ceremony of Perception, Memory,

and Renewal within Kimoon K’uxlaal

Opening Blessing

Come as you are.

Bring the heaviness you carry in your thoughts.

Bring the fatigue you feel in your bones.

Bring the longing you have kept hidden in the quiet corners of your chest.

You do not need to arrive ready.

You do not need to have answers.

You only need to come willing to stand in the light that has never left you.

Here, we honor the heart within all things —

the heart within the land,

the heart within the soil,

the heart within the animals,

the heart within the buildings,

the heart within the humans,

the heart within human possessions,

the heart within the crops,

the heart within the forests,

the heart within the Fire.

Here, we remember the fire that the land once knew —

not as enemy,

but as kin and caretaker.

Here, we open to the light of unknown possibilities,

and offer it to every place where fire now touches the earth,

that it may fulfill its largest purpose:

to restore wholeness for all.

We welcome Nawal Mosbel Joloom,

the Sweeper of the Skull,

the Liberator of Memory,

walking with the Bundle of the Martin

and the elder wisdom of the Rilaj Maam.

May her presence weave our memories back into the One Heart.

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