A City of Light and Flame

A City of Light and Flame
A City of Light and Flame, 2020

The concept of sanctuary contains in it an implicit ideal of separation, for the raising and bracing of barriers to persevere against the storms of the world. This urge for preservation is both understandable and necessary; even as a concept of self can not exist without walls to define itself, so too is our mutable physical existence tied to it. Sanctuary represents protection, and the pain and tumult of the greater totality threatens us with consumption and annihilation in its absence.

It must be remembered however that all forms of separation are ultimately illusionary, and the aegis of sanctuary is a transient shroud. Threads of eternal interconnection exist between all phenomenon, with lines of distinction in constant flux by the building deluges of change. In the face of such inevitability, sanctuary can with equal measure become an attempt to impose stasis on a process of transformation. A clinging that creates barriers not just between self and pain, but also between ourselves and the ability to transcend it.

Instead, in recognition, not denial, of the inherent unity of existence can we expand the self beyond both sanctuary and destruction. True sanctuary is found in the recognition of transience and an embrace of dissolution. Then it is possible for the momentary spark of consciousness to recognize its mirror in the towering inferno of the world. Then we may burn the walls of our sanctuary and exist as the light and flame. In doing so the broken shard of self is lost in unity with laughing epiphanies of storm.