Do You Resist Resistance?

summoned by need
gaunt from starvation
I emerge
slowly from the cave
Nauthiz
you are a hungry rune
fueled by bitter necessity
fierce with determination
your friction
sparks ancestral memory
ancient fires ignite

The Nauthiz poem is one of the 33 original rune poems created by Ingrid Kincaid, the Rune Woman.  These poems were first published in her limited edition, completely hand made book (un) familiar.
 

Nauthiz

(un) familiar Rune cards

Do you resist resistance?
If you’re trying to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together or using what's called a bow drill, then you can’t oil the sticks.  Not everything in life is about flow and ease and the law of attraction.  Sometimes there has to be friction, resistance and persistent, determined effort.
This is the story I often tell when Nauthiz appears.
It’s cold, damp, dark and you’re hungry. You need to build a fire and all you have is the bow drill, a primitive wooden tool used to create the spark that’s needed to start the fire.
You have a need. You have an intention. You have a tool.  You are determined to persist.  But what you also need is friction and resistance.  Without them the wood will never heat up enough to create the spark.  This is not the time to oil the wood.  You would oil the hub of a wagon wheel to keep it from catching on fire but never the wood of a bow drill. This is not the time for frictionless movement or ease. Rather, it’s a  situation that calls for effort and resistance. If you resist the resistance or stop too soon your need will not be satisfied. 
There’s something else you must remember.  Once the fire starts, you don’t need to keep using the tool. 

Fire is alive and each individual fire that comes into being is an offspring of Surt, the great Fire Jotun of Muspelheim. In your efforts to make fire of any sort do you ever think to call upon the gods or do you just take for things for granted and assume fire will always be there for you? 
Many of us in this so-called modern world have lost our connection with the sacredness of fire. All we need to do is strike a match, flick a lighter or flip a switch, turn a knob or press a button. 
Your very life depends upon fire and imagine that the only way to start one is to know how to do it yourself.  How different would your relationship with fire be if that was the case?  Would you call upon the great fire giants to support you?  Would you take for granted that you could do it alone, without their help?  Would you show appreciation?  The Nauthiz rune holds all of these questions.

Nauthiz is a hungry rune.  It can only be satisfied when the need is met and the solution exists in the need.  
It’s a sexual rune.  The desire, the friction, the passion, the necessity to reproduce.  Sex is part of the hunger for life.  
It’s a creative rune.  The urge, the longing, the effort, the potential.  Creativity is the need to make something new.
Nauthiz binds us to our ancestors and their need to have fire in order to live.  It binds us to giants of fire, to Muspelheim and hence to creation.  It reminds us that our spirituality cannot be only in the mind.  We cannot transcend the physical or material but rather we use our bodies to participate in the necessity of life.