Focal Things, Focal Practices

Albert Borgmann has written extensively on what he termed the device paradigm. He contrasts this to his understanding of focal things. If you are cold and you walk to the thermostat to turn up the heat, you are employing a device. A device, as device, does not connect you to your world. It does not bring coherence to an increasingly fragmented way of living and it does not allow you to provide care for others.

A wood stove affords such opportunities. As my father used to say when I was younger, ‘If you chop wood for the fire, you warm yourself twice.’ Stoking a fire well takes skill. You have to pay attention to what you are doing. It requires preparation and an engagement that transforms you as well as your world. Tending a fire is an act of caring for yourself and others.

The word ‘focal’ recalls its Latin root, the hearth. The hearth was the focal point of the home, its heart. It provided warmth. Food was cooked here. Light was provided for evening tasks as well. While household gods were superseded by knick-nacks and family photos, the mantel of a fireplace still maintained something of the sense of an altar. There was a place for the sacred.

Focal practices guard focal things. I still remember how my father taught me to light a fire. There is a process, a priority of actions. Each step leads the practitioner further down the path towards an excellence. In many cultures, the maintaining of the embers and their transfer from one location to another was a real symbol of the flame of life. Carelessness might forfeit the means of lighting a new fire. This could spell disaster to a person, family or community.

Now, I am older and in Australia. Autumn is Lent and Easter here. Advent is a penitential season. So is Lent. Penance. Not much call for that these days is there? Just fast forward and 'forget your regret'. Yet, just the other day, I remembered and was chagrined.

No one else would recall it. No one, but me. Perhaps. I suspect that there are many tendrils on that stray thought. I am hesitant to pull too hard lest I discover what else might surface. Penance. Having the courage to put right what was, or remains, wrong. Making right the relationship wronged. Can it be done decades later? In the 'graced' moment, we can begin.

That's another quality of Autumn. It is a time of hauling in the nets and repairing the damage done in the course of living. There is an Autumn in each day, week, month and year. There is an Autumn in each life. Perhaps the nets will be useful to the next generation.

Or, they may seek to leave the island of our ancient habitation. They may be off to new digs and experiences. Still, they may just be taking the same old people with them into the wider world.

Michael Powell, who would later become one half of the Archers with Emeric Pressburger, undertook his first major project as a director to capture this story, The Edge of the World. Rotten Tomatoes rates it at 100%. It is stunning in its beauty and poignant as a story. The cynic and the slick operator may smirk; but, the thoughtful recognize the signs.

How do we deal with our rash self-assertion or our cowardly failure to be true to who we are? Gently, but firmly. Penance is about a true assessment of what needs to be done. Then, it is also about making amends. Reconciliation is possible even in the face of death and dissolution. Faith, hope and love need not fail. At the 'edge of the world' in the Antipodes, Easter in Autumn reminds us of this.

When I was young, Autumn was a magic season. The wild wonder of Summer was over. Long days of play gave way to shorter days chock full of school work. I did not mind. I loved the freedom of Summer, but Autumn held you accountable. You felt that you had become more adult somehow; more responsible.

I always marveled at the changing colors of the leaves. The pumpkin and corn ripening and being harvested. The nip in the air that I knew as Jack Frost. The migration of birds. The preparation for hibernation among reptiles and mammals. Autumn was hunting season when we provided for winter meat. We learned to be more disciplined in our movements and alert to what was happening around us.

While Summer had one notable public holiday, the Fourth of July, Autumn began with Labor Day in September. It moved quickly towards Halloween and Thanksgiving. Labor Day to remind us of what workers have done and are doing. Halloween reminding us of our long-term contract with the dead. Thanksgiving as a reminder of what it is to be an alien in want of life's goods and needing the support of others to obtain them.

Perhaps that is the quality of Autumn for me; a time to be alert to what was going on around me.

And, as Autumn changes to Winter, there is the Advent season. Here is a time for a more profound listening. It is a sort of listening that wakes you up in the dead of night because deep in the silence something is heard within the heart. The year will soon change; perhaps I too will change.

But, it begins with the gathering in of Autumn.