Honoring the Element of Fire

presented as part of a Beltane Ritual sponsored by: Green Faith Boulder

Let’s offer gratitude for fire, Gratitude for light, Gratitude for warmth, Gratitude for fire’s transformative power from raw to cooked, sand and ash to glass, ore into object.

Some say that human use of fire was a principal factor defining human evolution. Let me take you to the site of the NCAR fire. This spring I’ve sat there repeatedly. Spring--the time of rebirth. Spring and fire are not two words normally associated with each other. But yet, when it was spring only according to the calendar, fire raged, clearly out of season.

In the periphery of the burned area, the fire has cleared the underbrush but left the trees largely unscathed. Moving inward, the fire burned hotter, singing the tree’s needles to a brittle brown. In one place, all life has been charred to blackness, revealing a steep rocky, boulder strewn hillside. Skeletons of trees, some upright, some arcing gracefully, are frozen into position. Clear sap, glistening jewels in the sun, dribbles like tears down many of the blackened trunks.

For a moment, I invite all of us to imagine sitting in the midst of this devastation. Stay present to the wrath and destruction.

Stay with the fear, the dismay, even horror. Stay present with an open heart. Let’s sense what fire has to teach us.

The elements are out of balance. Wind howls on these hillsides like never before. There have been twice as many days of extreme fire danger in the first four months of this year than in any year previously. Unchecked by the elements, a huge conflagration is burning in the south. This past month, April, was one of the driest months on record.

The earth is parched, ashen. In the NCAR fire zone there are gaping holes in the ground around some of the trees, even those that are still green, where the fire has gouged their roots.

Angry winds, withholding of moisture, shriveled soils—for a moment, let’s feel into the full wrath of the fire on the feverish earth.

The earth’s fever is stoked by the passion of human desire. Always wanting more, of taking more, but seldom offering thanks or giving back. Refusing the regenerative power of fire. Freezing the forest into an unnatural image of lushness, of even-aged trees. However, even the darkness of the charnel ground of the NCAR fire offers an invitation to perceive with fresh eyes. There is beauty in the blackness, in the stark forms of the trees, although it is not possible to be fully comfortable sitting on the barren ground or hard jagged rocks.

Even in the darkest areas, the jade blades of grass, unfolding from the ashes, hint at rebirth. In the distance, hillsides ravaged by the Marshall fire are a resplendent green, the fire having burnt all the dried grass that would normally compete for attention. A closer view reveals daffodils and tulips springing up from once carefully tended gardens.

Sitting with the aftermath, it is clear that fire offers a purification or cleansing, after which life force energies reassert themselves. Let’s stay for a moment, feel into the fire, as best as we can. Offer praise to the remarkable forms of the trees revealed by the heat of the flames. Praise for the new green grass, lush wildflowers, or the mushrooms that grow only after fire. Praise for the fire, the light, the heat, that is straining to clear the ground.

Praise for the fire that is demanding that we begin again, that we re-envision human ways of being and doing, while calling on traditional wisdoms, while calling on light, on love, on the tenderness of the human heart.

That the warmth of fire may nurture the mutual thriving of all beings, of all that is striving to be born.

This handwritten note from grandmother, Bertha V. Hays, encouraged me when I was in my twenties to bake, garden, sew, and otherwise create a life with my own hands. She was a font of inspiration!