Why HONEY in “Fire & Honey Ceremonies”?

Oh so many allurements to honey…
Here’s one.

When we pass through the heat of crisis and come out of the fire transformed, there is sweetness to be savoured.

After journeying through what can feel like an endless and sometimes cold, black night, dawn breaks with its tender breath. We stand quivering at the threshold of a new day, basking in fresh insight and in the delicate fragrance of having made it through the darkness.

Finally, almost tentatively at first, we harvest the honey of our hardship.

In the heart of crisis, we might remember what really counts, we might take stock of what slipped out of balance, or open to new possibilities and reorient our inner compass to better align with our heart’s whispers (which went too long unacknowledged).

Our own truth isn’t always convenient; it often takes us into the deep-end of the complexity and paradox held within this humble human existence.

We remember…

that endings and deaths precede new growth,

that dawn comes after night.

We remember that for a this new day to be different than the last, we need to engage with the struggle for meaning and make it our sacred work.

I’ve held this excerpt from Antonio Machado’s poem close to my heart, folded on a piece of paper, tucked into my shirt pocket or sitting with a stone on my window sill:

Last night as I was sleeping,

I dreamt—marvelous error!—


that I had a beehive


here inside my heart.

And the golden bees

were making white combs
and sweet honey


from my old failures.

(Excerpt from “Last Night As I Was Sleeping” by Antonio Machado)

I court this poem, as bees and honey and hives have long been my teachers. I’m captivated by the mystery of their journey from hive to sunlit meadows, as their thrumming bodies harvest nectar from the heart of blossoms to then transform this precious substance through the hard work of love into nourishment.

I read somewhere that for a pound of honey to be produced, 2 million flowers must be visited: that’s a lot of work, a lot of heat, a lot of weaving in and out of darkness and light, a lot of love.

When I find myself awake yet again in the thick of night, desperately trying to gather the threads of my heartbreaks and longings into a tapestry of meaning, I think of my heart as a hive. I imagine my heart woven into the fabric of life by the dance of bees flying in and out of my days to tap into the nectar of my experiences, filling the honeycomb of my mind with gratitude that will carry me through the cyclical winter spells.

Always knowing, remembering, that a sweet offering is silently being created in the darkness…

With love and wild blessings, Brooke