The Color of Gathering around the Fire

“Each of us is born

with a box of matches inside us

but we can't strike them

all by ourselves” 

(Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate)

So the story goes, that humankind, in some form, has gathered around a fire for hundreds of thousands of years. Frightened to awe-full respect by the explosive unfolding of a lightning strike; fleeing bush and grass fires; and one fateful, trajectory-changing day, holding fire captive to the control of a stone ring. Humanity's first hearth; the soul's light incarnate.

Gathering around the fire... ancient fires of the herds-people as they listened to the song of the stars, huddling for warmth; remembering hearth and kin at home. Ancient fires of the gods in mythic tales of struggle and power, creation and destruction. Ancient fires kilning bricks for monuments, roads, palaces, and huts. 

“Keep a little fire burning;

however small, however hidden.” 

(Cormac McCarthy, The Road)

Gathering around the fire... desert peoples on cloudless, cold nights, the cry of a desert fox on the hunt piercing the dark; arctic tribes feigning sunlight through the dark of winter's solstice, a soft fire's glow illuminating a snowy hearthstone.

Gathering around the fire... ancient flames, older than humanity; old when the dinosaurs roamed; timeworn when the earth trembled in its forming. Fuel and oxygen, joined in elder-dance; the movement of the universe in its first tentative steps, energy in motion. 

Gathering around the fire... the cooking hearth, upon which hangs a hearty stew, simmering and filling the home with the aroma of welcome. The forge: wherein the blacksmith bends metal to her will - nails, shoes, rails, hoes; tools of life. Gunpowder: the fire of war, of the hunt, of life and death.

For one hundred thousand years the village has gathered around the fire. Here our collective story is given voice, digested, remembered, retold. The village fire softens the hard heart of conflict, hardens resolve for life's challenges; makes a place for sorrow, even as it celebrates joy. In the fire's gathering shame has no voice as the village gathers wounding's fragments into wholeness.

The finest steel

has to go through the hottest fire.

(Richard M. Nixon)

Even now, after countless millions of fires, we gather. Electric stoves, natural gas furnaces, wood stoves, and combustion engines. We are drawn, as were our ancient ancestors, to the heat, the power, and the life of fire. It is written upon the codex of our cells - into our DNA: turn to the fire; come to its light; bask in its warmth. 

Gathering around the fire... a slowly dying thermonuclear reaction that floods a solar system with light and life. One star, in the immense vastness of the universe; one star whose gravity swings our planet on an invisible string. One star - our fire, the fire, the world's hearth.

The most powerful weapon on earth

is the human soul on fire. 

(Ferdinand Foch)

Gathering around the fire... fire of passion, fire of Love; the infernal of injustice burning against the background of change; the raging fire of new romance; the white-hot embers of old friendships. Finally, of all our gatherings, fires archaic and fires new, it is the fire of the soul that seeks meaning, connection, fuel. What fuels the fire that warms the hearth of your soul?

I leave the last word to 13th century poet, Rumi:

“Set your life on fire.

Seek those who fan your flames”

(Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi)

The color of gathering around the fire...

safety, community, life.

A spark

in the darkness

ignites

the tinder

of hope

hearth

and

home

You

are that

spark

Burn

Breathe

Be

To Ponder Further:

- From the Bible: "...for our God is a consuming fire." (Hebrews 12.29)

- From Hinduism: "There lies the fire within the Earth, and in plants, and waters carry it; the fire is in stone.
There is a fire deep within men, a fire in the kine, and a fire in horses: The same fire that burns in the heavens; the mid-air belongs to this divine Fire. Men kindle this fire that bears the oblation and loves the melted butter." (Atharva Veda 12.1)

- From Taoism: "Buy captive animals and give them freedom. How commendable is abstinence that  dispenses with the butcher! While walking be mindful of worms and ants. Be cautious with fire and do not set mountain woods or forests ablaze." (Tract of the Quiet Life)

The Color of That Which Truly Matters

“I'm lonely.

And I'm lonely in some horribly deep way

and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely,

and how deep this feeling runs.

And it scares the shit out of me to be this lonely

because it seems catastrophic.” 

(Augusten Burroughs, Dry)

My garage, and the storage room in our basement, are in similar states - they are filled with stuff. When spring has settled upon us (on the far horizon of this -31 C day) I want to go through this stuff to determine what are useful, desirable bits to keep, and which will be dispersed to new homes. It is a process of reduction of sorts - as in the cooking term wherein the flavor of a liquid is thickened and intensified by simmering or boiling. I want to simmer the contents of my storage areas down to an essence.

“What stays with you longest and deepest?

Of curious panics, of hard-fought engagements

or sieges tremendous

what deepest remains?” 

(Walt Whitman)

Other parts of life are simmering as well. Francis Weller's excellent book, "The Wild Edge of Sorrow" is on my stack of current reading. His writing is an invitation to descend the basement stairs of our being, exploring dim places where long forgotten sorrows may lay dust-covered and mildewy. Weller leads us into rituals of deepening, attending to, and listening to our being. This is an exercise in gentleness and patience, for many of our sorrows arise from stories near-forgotten, barely a whisper on the soul's lips.

"We were not meant to live shallow lives, pocked by meaningless routines and the secondary satisfactions of happy hour. We are the inheritors of an amazing lineage, rippling with memories of life lived intimately with bison and gazelle, raven and the night sky. We are designed to encounter this life with amazement and wonder, not resignation and endurance. 

This is at the very heart of our grief and sorrow."

(Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow)

Weller challenges us to engage that which he would say truly matters - our deepest sorrows, our shame, our healing, and our joys. All he says, are intimately intertwined. It takes courage to descend the stairs to the basement of our being; courage to unpack boxes wherein hurts were deposited that had no voice, no one to hold them. 

It is this work, though, of sorrow and grief, that gives meaning to the wonder of sunlight on snow, a grey shadow in the curl of a drift, or the innocent laughter of babies. Here is the grounding to find connection to others; to family, to community. To open our hearts to wonder we must first be open to deepening, to attending and to listening. Only then have we the presence of being to breathe-in this world, to take in the story of another, and to hold our own story as sacred.

Sorrows, some intimately known, some voiceless, await not our confrontation; rather, they beckon embracing. These raw places are full of energy; they pronounce, through a delicate dance, that we are alive, that we are being formed in a crucible, that we will not stand silent in the dark night of the soul. 

And so, a calendar page has turned, birthing the year of our Lord, 2018. A New Year, a new day, a present moment. Be alive in this moment - breathe deeply, feel passionately all that lays within the rooms of your heart; draw deeply from the well of your sorrow that you may quench the thirst of longing for wholeness.

“Consult your memory

to know what matters

most in your life.”

(Amit Kalantri)

2018 - there is only one of you among the 7.5 billion of us; you are rare and precious. May whatever sorrows attend you fall but gently upon your heart. Reduce to their essence the contents of your soul's storage rooms. In both joy and sorrow, grief and renewal, may you know that you are amazingly, truly alive, and may your sorrows be the bridge to that which truly matters.

I leave the last word to 19th century poet extraordinaire, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: 

“Every man has his secret sorrows

which the world knows not;

and often times we call a man cold

when he is only sad.” 

(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

Color of that which truly matters...

darkness rising to meet the light.

A box

buried among boxes

dusty

and forgotten

inside

a single tear

shed

for all the world's sorrows

Breathe

Laugh

Be

To Ponder Further:

- From the Bible: "The LORD is near to the brokenhearted And saves those who are crushed in spirit." (Psalm 34.18)

- From Tenrikyo: "I created you human beings because I desired to see you lead a joyous life." (Ofudesaki 14.25)

- From Sikhism: 

"Farid, I thought I alone had sorrow;
Sorrow is spread all over the whole world.
From my roof-top I saw
Every home engulfed in sorrow's flames."

(Adi Granth, Shalok, Farid, p. 1382)