Country life involves much more manual labour than life in the city. A prime example is wood heat (although, of course, not everyone in the country heats their home this way, but it is common). In the city, you program the thermostat at the start of the season and that's it. You do not have to lift a finger over the following months. If the furnace breaks, you call someone. Hopefully it doesn't.
In the country home with a woodstove, you order your logs or wood in the summer. You then split it and/or pile it and cover it to dry. You clean out your chimney in preparation for the burning season. By the end of October, you are burning wood, feeding the fire multiple times throughout the day, adjusting the flue, restarting the fire each morning, cleaning out the stove, dumping the ash, splitting kindling, carrying wood in from outside, stacking the wood by the stove. etc. etc. I once heard someone describe heating with wood as an 'endless amount of work'. How accurate! It is the very opposite of convenient. It is incredibly inconvenient.
But how very lovely it is. It is a profoundly warm heat, that reaches to the very marrow of your bones. It warms in a way that could never be achieved by all the furnaces in the world, and could be compared to the effect of taking a very hot bath in a clawfoot soaker tub. It is simple and real. You start the fire- if the fire goes out, or your house fills with smoke, you don't call someone, you do it. You put the match to the paper and stack the kindling and lay on the logs and clear the blockage and open the windows. There is something so human and real about it. Something that appeals in this modern age of artificial everything- from friendships to intelligence.
But a woodstove's utility lies in more than just the heat. To sit in front of the fireplace, on a cold night in January and gaze at the flames is a most sublime pastime. How it turns the mind to God, who, we are told, is like a consuming Fire. And what an image of the soul, who longs to be set on fire with the Divine Love but often languishes in ashes, smoldering away in its inability to be ignited or to sustain the fervor of its first love. A breath of fresh air, a turning of the log, is often all that is needed for the log to ignite and be engulfed in flames and consumed by the Fire of Divine Love.
Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Your faithful and enkindle in us the fire of Your Divine Love.
+Vivat Christus Rex!
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