Start a Fire I

Fire is wild.  Powerful.  Free.  We can sense that just looking at it.  As the first humans did when they first discovered it.  There is something magical about fire.  Untamed.  Objective.  Almost unhindered.  It requires great respect.  The flame is hot.  Very hot!

You put your hand in the fire, it will burn you.  That is how fire works.  We can be angry at the fire.  We can be upset that it burns us.  That does not change the fire.  That does not lessen the heat.  The fire is what it will be.  We can not change it!

But it certainly can change us.  If we are willing to let it.  The radiant heat, the brilliant colors, the wild flame.  All of which are out of our control, but within our reach.  Such beautiful, powerful light.  Such spectacular, devestating  heat.  Oh to take it in…

But where does fire actually come from?  What actually starts a fire? 

We know a precious spark is needed.  We can easily imagine the desperate flint and rock, looking for that one lone diminishing strike of light.  Fire.  But only if that spark lands in the perfect conditions.  That fierce fire starts so fragile, gentle and dependent.  The spark. Lighting in our hands.  But stubborn.

Try as we might in wet conditions, or with only a few raw materials, we struggle. And struggle. And struggle.   We long for, pray for, and earnestly seek for that precious spark of fire to land in just the right spot.  Cold, wet, hungry, thirsty. Without fire, eventually, we die.

Fire, once discovered, becomes essential.  Light.  Heat.  Without fire we could not purify food and water.  Yet for centuries the simple ability to make a spark remains an exhausting physical feat.  It would take work, centuries of work, to get the tech for what we might consider the basic striking match.

There was no guarantee.  Fire was gift.  Mystery.  Miracle.  Combustible magic…alchemy.  Science it was not, not yet.  It remained in the realm of spirit-craft, the mystical, the magical.  Perhaps it still is (or should be). 

Learning to manipulate fire was one of humanity’s great discoveries.  It changed everything about our experience of life.  With controlled fire we could settle for the first time.  We could have heat, safe food, clean water, anywhere we had fire.  And now we could make fire. Fire settled us.     

Fire in that way renewed our humanity.  It changed who we are.  It made us more human.  Less nomadic.  More centered.  More controlled.  More deliberate.  More reflective as well.  (Who can resist the meditational quality of a good fire - the centering power of the flame?)

Yet fire remained, in its truest sense, fire - red hot, dangerous, powerful. Domesticated it was not.  It is, and remains, wild, free, fierce, and bold.