Stoking the Embers, Tending the Fire

Last week, Matt and I had a bonfire in his backyard as a way to celebrate the beginning of warmer weather.  I was a bit restless and found myself constantly tending the fire.  I had so many thoughts trigger as I started to look at the fire as a metaphor for my own internal fire.  The bonfire provides an opportunity to for me to meditate on the fire element within me, something that I always feel is a weaker part of my constitution.  It always feels like something that needs more of my attention.  It needs more focus.  More stoking.  

Balancing Tending to the Fire

As I tended the fire, I could see myself in those flames. I began to understand how I think about fire. I kept focused on burning away the old paper and wood that had accumulated in the fire pit over the winter.  I wanted it to be burned away and out before adding too much new wood.  But the old stuff was still a bit damp and it was tough to keep the fire blazing.  I want to keep the flames high and hot in order to burn away that old damp shit at the bottom of the pit, so I added small dry pieces to keep the flames going, pushing the old stuff into the flames. I just wanted that old stuff gone, burned away, so we could have a fresh fire pit for the summer. What I soon realized, though, was that my constant tending was not the best way to stoke the fire's sustainability. I kept futzing with with the fire and causing it to go from high flames, to nearly losing the fire altogether.  Could there be a better metaphor for my own capacity to maintain my internal fire?  I am constantly futzing and meddling, because I think that to have that fire, it has to be a blaze. My capacity to see the middle ground and acknowledge the heat that embers can produce is in its most infant stages in my mind. 

 When I took a moment to sit and watch the fire, I saw that it could live without my constant attention.  When I let myself sit and watch the fire find it's own balance, I was captivated by the way it knew, just knew how to move and shift between the dry ease of the new planks of wood and the deeper work of burning off the damp residue of accumulated winter fragments. I saw that I didn't need to move the wood around all the time to keep the flames high.  It would move through a natural progression, burning and moving in its own way.  I would get up occasionally to add some wood or stir things around so that the damper pieces could move toward the heat and take their time burning away.  It was invigorating to see the way the fire could find its own balance and that left me thinking about how my internal fire needs space. It needs room to develop and create its own heat.  

Much like my previous post, I need to make space in order to move away from the momentum produced by the easy fast burn of dry wood and to start to go deeper into the spaces that need a hotter, deeper, longer-lasting heat that only embers can produce.  Those deeper pieces that benefit from the slow burn.  Routine and movement in and through myself is key to keeping the embers stoked, but I do not need to create excessive flames and heat to experience the value of fire.  In fact, I need more embers in my life.  Less volatile flames and more sustainable and containable heat that energizes and wakes me up from the long winter.