Corinne Riedel recommends Embers by Richard Wagamese
The peace that comes with reading Richard Wagamese’s Embers is a kind that makes a person new again. Reminders of belonging wherever you are, whenever you are, in whatever space and time you are is a kind of nutrition spirit needs in order to become good again. This is because we live in a world that tells us to consider everything and everyone before ourselves, to not insert ourselves into being truly present, truly here, and truly alive.
The Summer of 2018 was a horrible season of my life, one that bled into the Fall, and even a bit of Winter. I had just gotten my degree and felt the highest high, only to be followed by the lowest low. The man I was dating left me and I was gutted. Hollow. Embers came to me somehow and saved me in ways I had no idea a book ever could. I had never been so indebted to an author. I didn’t even know it was possible. What a gift it was in that instant. It was a feast. It was a mouth full of berries bursting in my mouth, one after the other, purple and red juice shooting out from between my teeth, cascading down my chin. It was all the feels, all the smells and sensations beautifully braided into stories, his and mine. And the way he saw the world in his earthwalk, is probably the same as he sees it now, in the skyworld. Perfect. Amazing. Connected. I think he’d be okay with me saying that.
I call back the listening, reading, and meditating on teachings of elders and similar great-thinkers-of-things, on how you can’t possibly experience joy if you haven’t yet experienced peace. Richard Wagamese was all over that. The way he wrote about how crucial it is, in this life, to have a sense of wonder and curiosity and the way he showed those through story created these implicit invitations. How he writes makes you want to be in relationship with all things animate and inanimate and for this, I am most grateful. At home, I am cozy–sacred sage and cedar lit up and crackling– I watch the orange and white hot light of the book jacket’s flames. They radiate warmth, radiate life and radiate a kind of peace in knowing that joy is here and now, just as it was there and then. I tell myself it always will be because this is how our relatives take care of us, offering their warmth and glow, their embers. We are the keepers of embers so we can give those away. This is how we love. Glow. Radiate. All of us. Embers.
June 2024 Creative Corner prompt response, published with the author's permission. Copyright © 2024 review by Corinne Riedel. Sign up for our newsletter for a chance to be featured on our blog, Pensieri.
Corinne Riedel-Pinnock (Métis) is of nêhiyaw and German descent and lives in Edmonton with her sweetheart Samora. Her nêhiyaw/Scottish-English ancestors from Red River, Manitoba are who she reaches back to so that she remembers who she comes from. Her parents are Stanley and Glenda Riedel (nee Blight) and her late grandparents are Author and Ada Riedel (nee Weiss) and Frank and Geraldine Blight (nee Sabiston). She is an auntie, a sister, a daughter, a granddaughter, a niece, a cousin, a partner and a human continually growing into becoming a better relative.
Corinne comes alive in her creative writing and in her work as an Advisor/Recruiter for Indigenous Language Teacher Development Projects (ILTDP). She knows a lot of Spanish and considers it her second language, nêhiyawewin will become her third. She is passionate about advocating for women, Indigenous women, girls and boys and for all Indigenous and BIPOC students. She has sat in on multiple committees that support and celebrate these amazing folx and is passionate about teaching and supporting students in their journeys to (re)membering themselves back into spirit.
When she isn’t chasing the sun, she’s making jewelry–or some other craft–she’s listening to music and singing; when she combines all three, she’s most in spirit.