SubscribeThe Spiritual Formation Retreats of the past two weekends, one in Olympia, WA and the other in Crestline, CA afforded me an opportunity to reflect and converse with a number of Emerging Journey participants around this simple poem, “Fire.” It is often very simple images that can cause us to think or re-think where we find ourselves. Amidst all the stuff of life—demands and tasks, relationships and expectations, intentions and decisions, etc—we often need perspective. This poem provided many a window into their pace and their work and their attentiveness in life.
Simply allow this poem to stir your thoughts as you read it aloud 3 or 4 times …What jumps out? Where does this poem take you?
Fire
What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water.
So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.
When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on logs,
then we come to see how
it is fuel, and the absence of fuel
together, that make fire possible.
We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.
by Judy Brown
Sam M Intrator and Megan Scribner, editors, Teaching with Fire: Poetry that Sustains the Courage to Teach, (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003), 89.
Possible Questions for Further Exploration:
• When did you learn to start a fire? What do you remember of these early lessons?
• What in the world does this have to do with your life of faith?
• “So building fires requires paying attention to the spaces in between, as much as to the wood”, what are some of the things you are being invited to pay attention to today?
• Where is there” breathing space” in your life? in your family’s life? in your community’s life? in your team?
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