The Purification Folks

 I was reading a piece this morning....talking about a ceremony in Ontario, Canada (the other side of the world, for me).  So this was called a 'flame purification' ceremony.  

What's it supposed to achieve?  You take all the bad words....bad pictures...bad drawings...bad poems...bad books....bad jokes....bad whatever, and throw them into a pit.  No, you don't pour gas or lighter fluid on it....you just light it up, and then stand there with a solemn look on your face.

The reporters don't really give you that great of an image.  There's no special words....no Cher song sung...no waving of sheets or flags....no shaman or Nazi chants.  Nothing.

At the conclusion, when the fire has exhausted itself....you stir the ashes and plant some tree.

Now, when I read this piece....I was thinking...'book-burning'.  You know...the 1930s Nazi-stuff.

But no, these people from the SW district of Ontario wanted folks to know....this was a real 'pure' ceremony.....no book-burning stuff.

As I read on....with the words of Radio Canada telling the story....they wanted to reassure me that while the original plan was to burn 4,700 books....something changed their mind and they just burned a couple of items to get 'pure'.

The fact that TinTin books were among the burned?  Well....in their mind, TinTin, his stupid dog Snowy, the diabolical Professor Calculus, the sinister Captain Haddock, and Thompson are all evil characters (almost fascists in nature).  Personally, I always thought that TinTin kid needed more discipline in his life....real structure....hearty work to build characters.  This adventure stuff was a total waste of time.  

I sat and thought about purification for a while.  Some of us would view purification as something that you sip through several bottles of wine and eat carrots daily for a week....to get a detox feeling or some healthy purification.

In the military, you'd find people who needed purification and give them a dump-truck load of sand, and 500 sandbags to fill....to get them really purified.

On the farm, you'd find folks who needed purification and let them haul 500 bales of hay on a hot July afternoon.....to get them feeling purified.

I've worked with people who found certain drugs that could release themselves from reality for day or two....getting to some level of feeling purified.  

So I just look at the book-burners, and feel like they'd have to burn a book or two each day....to get the purification feeling to 'stick'.