Peace in the flames

I’ve been thinking lately about the spiritual qualities identified as a capacity for acceptance and surrender and what we mean by that when talking spiritual traditions. They’re terms I’ve always found a bit irritating to be honest. They sit right up there with words used to describe life’s experiences when trying to sound spiritual.

I’d be rich if I had a buck for every time I’ve been told life’s a “journey” for example or that we’re to “surrender to the Mystery”. I’m a pretty serious control freak and I like to drive. The passenger seat is just not that attractive.

Various spiritual writers tell us, in their own particular language, that we need to free fall a bit into the Mystery which is life, we’re advised to be content with ‘here’ and ‘now’ that this ‘right now’ is always enough and that we are not in control.

There’s no need to be constantly looking for more or restlessly seeking to know what lies up ahead. And I get it, I think. Still, it’s hard to consciously accept that ‘here and right now’ is enough. It’s hard to stop the noise in my head that points to the want for more. It’s hard to believe that there’s no need perhaps for yet another adventure, yet another effort to find that something lurking just beyond my reach.

This concept of enough, of acceptance and surrender started to make more sense recently. It began to be a bit clearer as I noticed how content I often am in the evenings after I’ve lit the fire at home and settled into my favourite chair.

Living in central western NSW has its advantages. Not least of which is the opportunity to have a home with a real fire again. It’s something I grew up with and realise now it’s something that makes it possible for me to begin to think again about my spiritual life.

I’m challenged to rethink what matters most to me and how I want to live. It feels like time to accept some serious changes and let go of my constant and ambitious craving for more. It’s also a time to get used to living with a level of anxiety perhaps and to learn how not to feed fear.

Staring into the flames in the fire place at night, I find it possible to sit still and be present to what is rather than how I’ve imagined I’ve always wanted life to be.

There’s something timeless about flames in a fireplace. Flickering flames ignite memories of past times and thoughts jump from childhood games of days long gone. We always had a fire burning inside in the winter. When I was a kid we had a fireplace in the lounge room and an old oil heater in the hall that burnt through the cold Cooma months and kept the windows from frosting over when the temperature outside plummeted at about 4 in the morning.

I loved to sit in the lounge room with the lights down low and watch the flames inch along logs we’d taken hours to stack in the shed. The glow from the hot coals would light up the hearth and sitting close  my face would flush hot as the grill holding burning logs turned almost blue with the heat.

Sometimes we’d play a game. My brother and I would stand as close to the fire as we could for as long as we could bear it. We’d stand with backs to the fire until it felt like our trousers would burst into flames. Then we’d bolt outside into the cold air or crash dive out onto the cold frosty grass. It was, I suspect, quite dangerous… but hell it was fun. 

Sometimes I’d watch my father clean his pipe by the fire in the evening. He’d bang out the old tobacco – Amphora Blue – against the wall of the fireplace and then flick the pipe a few times into the flames and the tar would hiss and the smell of rich tobacco would waft back into the lounge room.

These days I fire up the combustion heater with wood from the shed and watch the flames spread along the logs. It’s so much a ritual of sorts. It isn’t just the setting of the fire though and the lighting of the flames. It’s the picking up of sticks, the selection of pieces of bark and kindling that I’m noticing now.

I’ll spend hours each week walking paddocks searching for the best sticks and the driest bark. I’ll haul it all back to the house and stack it with OCD precision in the shed. I’ll grade the wood. Little pieces for the first few minutes of the burn, larger pieces of dry sticks, followed by bigger sticks and finally a log that will last all night through. It’s a source of some pride to wake and find the fire still warm and the house still cosy though it’s freezing outside. 

It’s almost a primal thing I suspect, this fascination with fire and this wanting to be close to it. As life gets a little slower, I suspect I’m finally ready to begin thinking about acceptance and surrender. I can feel how much I have to be grateful for, how precious memories are, how precarious and short life is and how constantly trustworthy this breathing in and out by the fire experience actually is.

I’ve glimpsed myself slowly being more present to what is rather than what might be and I think I’m almost ready to stop feeding the constant restless longing for more than I already have. Maybe this sitting by the fire tradition has a meaning that transcends times and cultures. Maybe the flame that burns within, the fire of life’s energy that flickers deep inside us is what sustains us ultimately.

Maybe it’s that fire, that light, that energy that deserves to be sat with and stared into. Maybe it’s time to accept that I already have pretty much all I really need, that enough has always been enough. Maybe it’s time to look at my own longing again and wonder what it is I actually really want. I suspect I’ve done with loneliness, it’s a dull ache but no longer a driving force.  

 Maybe there really is a peace that passes all understanding burning quietly within if only we could stop long enough by the fire to notice.