Touch the Fire

I've been thinking a lot lately about finding your way when you feel lost. About getting your bearings when you feel disoriented. About finding your mojo when life has sucked you dry. All these things are painful in themselves and we often struggle in isolation to understand our lives. But we don't have to be alone!

So often though it is our own hardness that creates and then perpetuates the isolation. We put up strong defenses in the form of emotional and mental barriers against others, even those we are closest to. I think we do it to protect the spark of the soul, to preserve that one final reservoir of vitality from being snuffed out in a cold and dark world.

And we suffer because we can't really connect with those around us. Well, we connect but its rarely at that deep center that we are trying to preserve. Because real connection with real people is risky. They may quench the fire! No. No. Or they may stoke the fire. Gasp. Gasp. And either way that is the end of us, or so we think. "Oh that is just way too dangerous," we think to ourselves! Not consciously but at the deepest core of our being which we aren't even aware of for the most part.

However, it occurred to me that the fire at the center of our lives is in reality a divine fire. That fire can't be blown out or even stoked by another human being (although there are other fires in us that can be!). It's just a small spark of that divine fire that penetrates the coldness of an infinite universe and draws out the dormant life that is there.

And there are special moments when that divine spark in one soul touches the divine spark in another. It can happen between friends, and spouses, and even maybe somebody we've just met. And it is truly magical and beautiful but hard oh so hard to manage. It seems to me that such experiences remind us that life is a gift and grace is alive!

Opening Up to the Life That is Waiting

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us." (Joseph Campbell)

It is no easy thing to give up on one's plans. At least if it's a plan in which we have invested significant amounts of thought and energy. And it is often quite inspiring to hear the stories of those that have persevered in spite of difficulties to achieve something against the odds! However, we also instinctively know that the life we planned is not always the life we get to live. And if we refuse to open ourselves to a reality other than that which we intended we might become embittered by what seems like failure.


Great literature reminds us that life is a journey over which we have little control. The stories of heroes such as Gilgamesh and Oddyseus remind us that life is a road with many twists and turns along the way. Life is determined largely by the way that we respond to the circumstances that impinge on our plans and frustrate our desires!


The book of Genesis records the story of Abraham, one of the great heroes of the Jewish faith. "Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.'" (Gen. 12:1-3)


Abraham is here asked to leave the life he was planning for himself and to embark on a journey with no roadmap. He was asked to leave the security of his nation, his culture, and his immediate family into an unknown and seemingly insecure future. Abraham experienced this as a divine invitation to step out and embrace the life that awaited him. And in giving up the life he had planned for himself and embracing the life that was waiting on the distant horizon he became a different man than he would otherwise have been.


Sometimes it is in letting go of the life that we planned for ourselves that we open ourselves to the life that is waiting!