Deep in my soul there is a fire that burns.
An energy I can not compress or deny.
This fire is alive and burns even when it rains and pours and the thunder casts me down to the ground.
This fire defies all enemies of its flame.
The sacred wild wind kindles its life in the deep that calls to deep.
It is life and energy that liberates me from the lies that deny it.
This fire in my soul has kept me alive when death has called on me many times in my life. It is kindled in the ground of my being as the Holy mystery.
So interesting that God is referenced in the ancient sacred witness as fire. Moses on the mountain, standing barefoot before the burning bush that speaks to him as the I AM who I AM… and this fire it comes again as flaming tongues from heaven resting on the people who are longing and waiting for God.
I am beckoned to focus on the flame…not on my circumstance or smallness of mind. The fire is the greatness of God.
I sit in the belly of the whale like Jonah and write by the fireside; to be here now, to be here with you.
I call it whale time. Those seasons of life that blow trauma and suffering into our path like unexpected winds, with rain and thunder and lightning. Sometimes bolts of hail and waves that surmount our capacity to overcome. We can only be there, wait and wonder and allow the waterfalls of our soul to raise us up again but always changed and always deepened. I have seen many of these storms in my life that turn me back to the fire, the kindling of my soul, the resting in God for the new life that wants to emerge from such sufferings and the transformation that unfolds in the wake of it all, both in life and in death. I am a witness to resurrection power. I have been through life and death and life again many times in my one sacred earth journey. I have come to know that God's love is more powerful than death and our spirits in God are stronger than our afflictions.
The story of Moses standing barefoot near the burning bush is found in the ancient Hebrew scriptures of the Bible in Exodus 3. The story of the flames that appeared as tongues of fire is found in the Christian scriptures of the Bible in Acts 2.
Come to the fire and call on its presence.
I wonder how you have experienced fire in your life as Sacred Holy Presence?