Category: Journal

The next in a series of essays by Charmain Ponnuthurai is on ‘The role of fire in promoting stillness’. Charmain (Dammy) is the author of Midnight Feasts: An Anthology of Late-night Munchies, and founder of Larder. She is also the founder of Crane cookware used by the Charnwood team in many of our photo and video shoots. 

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“I approach a cedar hut where I plan to sit quietly for a few hours, gathering the scattered pieces of myself. I draw in a deep breath, let it go, and try to shed a feeling of decadence for sitting here alone, idle on a Sunday morning”- Scott Sanders (from his essay on Stillness)

In his essay on stillness, Sanders speaks of the active need to switch off from the continuous distractions that crowd modern life, in the pursuit of the rewarding silence that only a state of hermetic time brings. The amount of time we spend absorbed by our screens and with the added layer of AI working its way into decisions that might otherwise have been made using our more analogue senses, such as imagination, have the potential to change the course of society. So much so people talk now of actively seeking ways to deprive their senses, through means such as sensory deprivation tanks. This battle between our technologically rewired brains and our own soul’s calling is one we can only really hear when our crowded minds and diaries are silenced. This silence can at times feel unnerving as listening to that still small voice can bring with it both waves of sadness and joy with its breath.

If we are open and brave enough to look for this sense of silence, it can be found in few such simple things in everyday life that are as effortless as sitting in front of a crackling fire. Whether that fire be the warmth of the home wood burner, the campfire or the greeting of a welcome pub fire on a rainy day, the light and flickering flame drawing us into being present in the moment, it’s a simple commune with nature that draws us into the moment and away from our busy minds.

Much has been written about fire, from the mythologised in the story of Prometheus who stole fire from the Olympian Gods, to the eulogised history of Mayan culture where fire was used as a major force of transformation. First traces of lighting a fire date as far back as a million years ago. Scientists have found that the use of the fire for cooking dates back some 800,000 years ago. The ability to control fire allowed for so much human freedom, both in terms of geographical movement, extending waking hours and most potently that sitting around the fire was the beginning of early language development.

In Mayan culture we see acts such as burning fields as a transition across cycles of times. They viewed fire as cleansing, restorative and burning away the old to make the new. The Maya wrote about their rituals of fire in their classic period (A.D 250-900) inscriptions. The most important are ‘och k’ank’ (fire entering) and ‘el-naah’ (house-censing), rites were directed at both their homes but even found within the tombs of Mayan Royalty. Even today every year in Guatemala, on December 7, people burn piles of household garbage as means to cleanse their homes on the eve of the Feast of the Immaculate

Conception. In ancient times, we find evidence that the Maya lit even entire houses in rites of renewal.

Fire is such a potent subject, full of magic, danger, promise and the innate mesmerising quality that commands a silent respect, bestowing in its glowing flames a returning calmness. As we continue to further understand the connection between the mind and body’s health, we appreciate the need to look holistically at ourselves when searching for a cure to illness. Calmness is something that we relate to hermitage, meditation and deep religious orders. Though we may not be afforded the time for taking such time for sanctity we can perhaps find this in lighting a fire.

We recently undertook a survey asking the primary reasons that people have chosen to purchase a stove. Apart from the practical reasons such as for warmth and cooking, a significant number of the respondents stated their purchase was led by the purpose of well-being. Learning to lay a fire in itself has the distinct reward of being in the moment and working with our physicality and senses to bring in the kindling and the logs..

There is a strong intuitive understanding within ancient cultures that a fire holds the promise of improving our well being. As we consider that sitting by a fire brought about early forms of language development, it seems there are more expansive possibilities waiting to be discovered within the stillness of the flickering flames.

My heart grew hot within me. While I meditated, the fire burned; Psalm 39:3

For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him. Psalm 62:5

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If you haven’t read Charmain Ponnuthurai’s piece on ‘storytelling’ click here – we highly recommend it! 

The next in a series of essays by Charmain Ponnuthurai is on the subject of ‘gathering’. Charmain (Dammy) is the author of Midnight Feasts: An Anthology of Late-night Munchies, and founder of Larder which is all about giving the gift of cooking from scratch. Featuring excellent food writing and thoughtfully sourced hero ingredients that allow the recipient to discover their cooking creativity. She is also the founder of Crane cookware which the Charnwood team love and use in many of our shoots. When it comes to food, everything she touches turns to gold delicious. Without further ado here is, Charmain Ponnuthurai on ‘gathering’…

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“When we don’t examine the deeper assumptions behind why we gather, we end up skipping too quickly to replicating old, staid formats of gathering. And we forgo the possibility of creating something memorable, even transformative.” – From the Art of Gathering by Priya Parker 

We are able to communicate in more ways than ever before, yet doctors across the UK report that loneliness pervades all social groups, and suggest finding the prescription for this may help to alleviate oversubscribed GP’s waiting rooms. Whilst the internet has granted us the flexibility of crossing geography and time zones,  nothing can replace the moment that togetherness brings. Walking through Victoria Park at the end of the August bank holiday weekend with thoughts of the end of summer, I was stopped by hearing the cacophony of voices singing behind stadium gates on the last day of the annual East music festival. The feeling of being part of this festival gathering whilst only standing outside the gates made me consider a newly learnt concept of Polyphony. This phenomena is described in a passage in Merlin Sheldrake’s book Entangled Life. He refers to a recording by an American musicologist of the Aka people, in the Central African Republic where no one voice loses its identity, yet neither does it steal the show. “Although each voice is free to wander, their wanderings can’t be seen as separate from the others. There is no main voice. There is no lead tune. There is no central voice. Nonetheless a form Emerges.” 

In our daily working lives and in the presentation to others of ‘what we do & who we are’, there is often the pitting against flex, showing ourselves to be more accomplished. However, striving for individuality we may risk losing the insight of the voice that speaks the quietest. Gathering occurs chiefly around food, music and art, prompting us out of our individual selves and enabling us to look up and into the wider world we inhabit. We just have to look at our feathered friends to understand the intelligence of gathering. 

The most startling of all is that of the starling, “Each bird in a murmuration is a participant and leader within a complex and ever evolving system. Each has the power to shape the direction and shape the whole system with the power to create entirely new constellations”. 

Arguably, what sets humans apart from the rest of the natural world is our self awareness, which has led to insularity and individualism. When we are able to exist in the moment without guile is in social groups; here we are able to release our sense of self and day to day preoccupations. In these groups we can be at one with nature, social animals thriving in the company of each other. 
 

Perhaps at a fundamental level, we are able to realise when we gather, how much a part of nature we are. Whilst we like to separate our species in its uniqueness, we are like – and of course share genes with – all organisms with all living organisms. Have you ever noticed that despite the fact that a stove heats the entire room in which it sits, we as groups huddle near its flames, becoming even closer. As birds throng together in the sky, as penguins huddle close on the ice, as various species congregate at the same water source. The stove for humans brings us together, not only from the feeling of being closer to the heat for warmth but utilising the stove for cooking simultaneously. The intimacy and connection to this makes it feel like whatever food it delivers will be more delicious than one that could be cooked on with a regular kitchen stove. Perhaps it’s in the wonder in its role as heat provider and nourishment that holds our attention and brings a group together in a less perfunctory way than an induction hob. Being part of the cooking is not only in the sourcing, chopping and creating the dish itself but in actually collecting the logs, kindling and laying the fire. 

A form of gathering at its simplest level is the family kitchen, which – however crowded it becomes – is always the core of the action in a home. It is always so bemusing and sometimes frustrating! How small children, even within wider spaces, stay close to adults and in this way they create a close group gentleness. The ultimate sense of gathering where we are not so focussed on our individual being but the shared touch and connection to the other. A more poignant example of gathering in and shared group experience is amidst the brutal hardship of war. In the beautiful book by Hubert Mingarelli, ‘Four Soldiers’, set in 1919 during the Russian Civil War, the soldiers set up camp together on The Romanian Front line. The book describes so poetically a sense of love between the men through steps such as making their temporary home. The glowing appreciation of working together and the shared joy. It talks of how they get through the harshest winter with the warmth from their togetherness eeking out food, enjoying the opportunity of strong tea, waiting, speaking and smoking. There is a deep reward often found in the darkest moments revealed to us a little like the murmurations in the unity of action, where there is no leader but shared movement and a hearing of all voices is where beauty is found. 

“And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching”  

(Hebrews 10:24)

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If you haven’t read Charmain Ponnuthurai’s piece on ‘storytelling’ click here – we highly recommend it! 

This is the first in a series of essays by Charmain Ponnuthurai. Charmain (Dammy) is the author of Midnight Feasts: An Anthology of Late-night Munchies, and founder of Larder which is all about giving the gift of cooking from scratch. Featuring excellent food writing and thoughtfully sourced hero ingredients that allow the recipient to find or rediscover their cooking creativity. She is also the founder of Crane cookware which the team love and use in many of our shoots. When it comes to food, everything she touches turns to gold delicious. Without further ado, here is Charmain Ponnuthurai on Storytelling… 

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All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.” – William Shakespeare, ‘As you Like it’

As the nights draw in and we set our minds towards wrapping up , autumnal soups and stews, the end of the day holds the promise of a lit fire and time to slow down with the marrying of the change in light. One such joy of slowing down is the luxury of opening a book, and this has become even more treasured as our lives are governed in a large part by immediate tech based communication. Enveloping ourselves in a story enables us to change gear – in fact according to neuroscience research reading fiction enables an opening of our empathetic pathway. We depend on this empathy to allow our minds to open to stories, without which we risk stagnating within the tightly set perception of our own preconceived ideas.

The ancient art of storytelling predates writing, using oral narrative, gesture and even painted symbols. We can all imagine that intimate time as the light fades at the end of the day where ancient communities without the conveniences of electricity, were simply absorbing the light and warmth of the fire. The animated spoken sharing of stories married with the ancient art of drawing we find all over the world. The Australian aboriginal people painted symbols as a means of helping the storyteller remember the story, and since humans have carved into trees to record folktales in pictures.

Ancient stories range from the familial, the historical to the religious and spiritual. There is a materiality to the way that the drawings took shape both in their content but also in the form of canvas chosen to record the memory of the story. In Japan the earliest form of Manga could be found on paper scrolls,in Mexico above doorways in the form of lintels, in the Middle East by Assyrians through elaborate stone work, in Africa and Australia painted on rocks, in China within bronze mirrors and in 5th Century Rome through the passion caskets in Ivory. There are of course many more examples across all cultures; the human dedication to storytelling is infinitely tied into all of our cultural heritage and history.

William Shakespeare as one of the world’s foremost storytellers, helps illustrate this point well. We may often think of his stories as fictional tales, make believe. Yet the success of Shakespeare is rooted in the relatability of his characters and plots – from Othello’s jealousy to Demitrius’ lust, from Hamlet’s grief to Don Pedro’s wit. From the minor to the major aspects we are living the stories we have been retelling for generations.

We have all had those moments, maybe at the top of a mountain as dawn breaks, or a roaring fire at Christmas, which holds a special focal point as we share the stories of the year gone by and the ones we imagine going forwards. The essence here is we can feel the possibility of colouring outside the lines of our daily existence.

In the tale of Prince Siddartha we read the tale of a privileged Prince whose father the King has worked to from encountering any of the world’s hardship. Siddartha was cosseted by beauty and luxury, with even his trips outside the palace wall heavily choreographed by his doting father, who instructed that the streets were filled with flowers and only beautiful healthy crowds. Legend says his experience of leaving the palace produced the first signs of cracks to his rose tinted life, as he saw people in the crowd that did not meet the expectations set by his father. Whilst Siddartha’s questions on the suffering he glimpsed on those trips were ushered away with excuses, the young Prince grew restless and ended up leaving the palace under the cover of night to begin the journey of enlightenment and to discovering through hardship a new story and through his own journey was able to share a bigger story of a oneness with humanity that has remained as a positive set of principles for living with a shared consciousness towards the other.

Stories that stand the test of time comprise so many layers, and have provided us with a way for sharing and interpreting the breadth of experience that life offers. Stories enable us to bridge national, cultural and generational divides. They include the things we suggest and tell ourselves to provide a vision for at best the moment, that day or year ahead, stories mirror our experience of the world and therefore allow learning from lives beyond our own.

Perhaps one of the most over used words of our times is the sense we are all so ‘busy’. We can feel the self creaking as we make the expression, but in that moment after a long day and the fire is lit, we can sit and gaze at the flames with the possibility of a silent retreat into our imaginations. Whether that moment is shared or alone, like the fluid movement of the flames themselves, stories have the capacity to move us in unexpected ways.

All Jesus did that day was tell stories—a long storytelling afternoon. His storytelling fulfilled the prophecy: I will open my mouth and tell stories; I will bring out into the open things hidden since the world’s first day.

Matthew 13:34-35

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BONUS:

If you like what you have read then her latest podcast is really worth a listen – Click here to listen!