In the Fire

Meditation and Creative Prompt

Dear Fellow Human,

How are you, my friend? Tell me honestly, and I’ll tell you honestly: I feel small and tender and not-yet-clear about how to effectively protect vulnerable and threatened human and non-human populations that I value deeply. For now, I am observing the darkness care-fully, looking for light, and sharing what sparks of insight I find.

What better place to find a spark than a fire?

Fellow human, please join me at a fire on the beach. The moon is bright and waning, and the stars are blinking at us across the distance of spacetime. I’m going to put a log called WANTING TO KNOW HOW IT ALL TURNS OUT into the flames. Let’s see what happens.

Poof! The log disappears as if it never existed. Then it reappears as if it never vanished and proceeds to refuse the lick of the flames. No spark. Just a great swirling, hissing cloud of steam and smoke that churns and builds until it coalesces into a great smoky beast with arcing fangs and rolling eyes and clicking claws. Then, poof! The beast is gone, and in its place a hundred thousand twittering birds circle wildly around us. The stirred-up birds turn into butterflies that flutter into our stomachs, permeating our skin as if it was air, and flapping catawampus in our innards.

Just when we feel we might explode with the discomfort, the log bursts into roaring flames as our guts settle back into normalcy. Within seconds, the log combusts entirely into ash as two great sparks fly up. Each spark turns into a fortune cookie that lands gently in each of our laps. Your fortune says THAT WAS WILD, WASN’T IT? and mine says ISN’T UNCERTAINTY INTERESTING? The cookies taste like they came out of our grandmothers’ ovens, and the tide sounds—for a moment—not like crashing water, but like familiar footsteps we have not heard in ages.

So much for wanting to know how it all turns out. Another one of our logs is called WE’RE RIGHT AND THEY’RE WRONG. How do you think that might burn? Or how about the log called THIS IS MORE THAN I CAN HANDLE? What other names do you think the logs might have, and how might those burn? Please put your answers in the comments below.

Fellow human, that was a bit of magical realism, but the truth is that I do have fires on the beach with friends, and we do name our logs before we put them on the fire, and they do burn in ways that seem somehow fitting to the name we gave to the log (here’s a poem about one of those fires, but please be forewarned that my poetry is rather obtuse).

What happens when we put something in a fire? Not everything burns. Some things melt, some things explode, some things just sit there, heated up but otherwise unfazed, and some things transform into something entirely different. In many places in the world now, it looks as though all manner of living and nonliving things are being thrown into a fire. It’s scary and sad because so much of what is going into the fire is essential to the wellbeing of humanity and nature. But part of me is watching that fire with curiosity, and wondering, what’s going to burn? What’s going to explode? What’s going to be unfazed? What is going to transform—and what will it emerge as—and when?

Fire is powerful and destructive. But if it is tended and contained, fire can be lifegiving—providing safety, warmth, nourishment, and illumination.

• What sort of fire burns in your heart these days, fellow human?

• With whom might you build a communal fire that you might tend collectively?