Kuraka of Staffs

There is a spark in the air tonight. I feel uplifted, inspired, awakened to something I did not understand before. Tonight's ceremony was felt in my bones, and at one point I realized there were tears in my eyes.

The Kuraka stood near the center of everything, holding the tall ceremonial staff crowned with the familiar image of Viracocha. I had seen that staff in younger hands before. I watched one carried urgently along the road and another transformed beneath the careful hands of an artist. Tonight I finally saw what it could become when lifted before a community gathered with shared purpose.

I could not understand every word he spoke, but I did not need to understand every word to see what happened around him. When he raised his hand, people became attentive. When he directed someone toward another part of the gathering, they moved. When the ceremony grew louder, he seemed to know when to let its energy rise and when to draw everyone back toward the center. He was serious and focused, yet there was something almost electric in the way people responded to him.

And then there were the flowers. They had been arranged near him among the other ceremonial objects, brilliant against the stone. Reds, yellows, colors made even warmer by the late light. At one point his hand moved over them as he addressed the gathering, and although I did not know the meaning of the gesture, I could feel the attention of everyone around me shift with his.

That was when I cried.

I have spent so much of this journey thinking about what gives one person purpose. Tonight I watched what can happen when that fire reaches beyond one person. The Kuraka did not create the devotion, skill, belief, or energy of everyone gathered there. He knew how to bring it together and give it direction.

Walking away afterward, I could still feel the ceremony moving through me. Perhaps that is another form fire can take. It begins as a spark within us, but sometimes it grows bright enough that other people can see by it too.