In The Fire (Tara Taylor Quinn)

I was wandering around a bookstore one evening several years ago, at loose ends, in the moment and in life. My daughter had just moved into her own apartment, her own life. I had my career, and a friend or two, writers, in other states. There were people I knew from church. Family members that I loved dearly. A cousin I e-mailed several times a week. Mostly, though, I felt as though the real me, the person in here who breathes and feels, was completely and utterly alone. No one had any idea she existed.

And then, right there in front of me, was this book. "The Invitation." What? No one knew me. I was alone. And I was being invited somewhere? Compelled, I picked up the book. It was a poem, really. Followed by a short little chapter for each stanza that expounded on the stanzas. All in all, maybe an hour or two of reading.

And a lifetime of wisdom.

I found a friend that night. Literally. I bought the book. Locked myself in a room with a glass of wine and soft music and read. And the next day, I wrote to the author. Oriah Mountain Dreamer. (Pen name given to her by the Indians with whom she studied.) She'd changed my life. Changed me. Shown me me. As I read her words, it was as though I was hearing the voice inside of me. Someone knew me. The real me. I told her I felt a little stupid writing to her. I was an author after all. I got fan letters. I'd certainly never written one.

Her response was immediate. And sincere. She lives in another country, but we stay in touch. And have met a couple of times when we've both been at the same writer's function. I had the pleasure of having breakfast with her last June in New York and she told me that The Invitation, the poem, had been put to music and was in the process of being recorded. She let me listen to an amatuer recording. She wanted my opinion on the music. Imagine that!

The one thing that Oriah said in that original poem that spoke to me more than anything else, was that she wanted someone who would sit in the fire with her. Wow. I wasn't even sure of all of the ramifications of what that meant. But I knew I wanted it. Someone to sit in the fire with me.

I suppose, to some, that could mean that she wanted someone to go to hell with her. But, I knew that wasn't it. Oriah didn't see fire as a negative. It wasn't a bad thing. Or evil. Fire was life. Living. In all it's shades and forms. She wanted someone to sit with her, and she wanted to sit with them, as they experienced all that life had to offer. She wanted someone who was there when the going got tough. THAT was sitting in the fire. She wanted someone who loved her when she lost her temper. Who would listen when she sat and cried. Someone who was not afraid of her intensity. She wanted someone who would share their own intense moments with her. After an abusive marriage and tough years alone, Oriah re-connected with her young love from church camp and found someone to sit in the fire with her. He is now her husband.

Fire facinates me. It draws me. And it repels me at the same time. I hate what fire did to Maggie's precious Serenity. And to her babies. I shudder everytime I think of it. Horrible. Sad. And when I lived in Arizona, we'd hear about, and fear, and take precautions to prevent, desert fires. The desert was so dry and the desert brush miles and miles of avid kindling. And Suz wrote a while back about the forest fires that rage through California, leaving havoc and lost homes and memories, and death in their tracks. Here in Ohio, hardly a day goes by that there isn't another headline about another house that caught fire. There've been some horrible ones in the past few months - one in which five people were killed, a woman and four children. The fire had been set by the woman's ten year old son. He didn't mean to hurt anyone.

These fires rage out of control. They're angry and destructive and seemingly all powerful.

And then I think about the movie Castaway, starring Tom Hanks. Remember all the lengths he went to to get a tiny flicker of flame on that deserted island? Without that fire, the warmth and the ability to cook, he was going to die. He scraped and rubbed and scraped and rubbed until he was bloody, but he finally got the fire going. That tiny spark of flame brought tears to my eyes. And then, throughout the movie, I hardly dare breathe lest I blow out the fire. Snuf out a life.

I read books about life in earlier days, when fire was an element that people had to have to survive. Without fire they'd freeze to death in a matter of days. Or even, in some places, a matter of hours. Cowboys had campfires for warmth and cooking. Fire sterilized needles.

And today, when you're selling a house, you get more money if your home has a fireplace. And when you're buying, you pay extra to have one. It's a luxury. A wanted element. Fire speaks romance. Love. Girls for centuries have gazed into fires for dreaming. Books are written by the fire. Proposals are made, and accepted. Children are conceived.

Fire is one of the four elements in astrology. (The other three are earth, air, and water.) According to those beliefs, all of us who are Leo (Sagittarius and Aries, too) are the fire sign. We're bright. We're strong. We want to take control. We're the motivators. (Personally, if I were to follow the dictates of these teachings, I'm far more water and air than fire, but that's another story.)

This past weekend I had my first bonfire. I didn't just see it off in the distance, or stand by someone else's fire for a moment to soak up warmth. No, I actually helped my husband build it. In a pit we'd just created in our back yard. I lit the flame. And I tended to that initial, tiny little bit of hot, dancing light until those flames were shooting up past my head.

The fire could have been in control of me, I guess. It could have gotten out of control. There was definite danger there. My foot started to feel really hot at one point and I realized it was because the bottom of my boot was on fire. In seconds the rubber was burned right off.

And yet, minutes later, when I dropped an armful of wet leaves atop the powerful entity I'd helped create, it languished. Suffocated. Died. Just like that. From a pile of harmless, limp tree fallage. A leaf couldn't hurt a thing. Kids jump in piles of leaves! They don't fight back. They rip easily. Leaves are fragile. They die easily. Every year. And yet, those leaves killed a raging, dangerous power.

I had to coax the fire back. Tend to it. Feed it. I had to give it air. Fire, just like me that night at the bookstore, needed care to survive.

And as I sat there later, a girl staring into the flames and dreaming, a woman sharing the moment with the man she loves, sitting in the fire with him, I realized that fire is a symbol for all of life. Just as fire needs air to survive, and can be drowned by water, just as it needs earth matter as food, nourishment, to burn, we all need each other, and the earth's elements. We all work together. Where I am strong, another is weak. But where I am weak, another is strong. We all have good and bad about us. Anger and happiness. We all can bring danger, or comfort. We all are a luxury and potential pain.

Just like fire. It's strong. And fragile. Dangerous and life sustaining. It's intensely scary and romantic. Gives great comfort, warming cold bodies. And great pain when it actually touches skin.

Fire is facinating. And so are we.

Fire requires great care. And so do we.

We teach our children not to play with fire. And yet at the same time, we play with each others hearts and emotions, or at the very least, disregard them. We take our loved ones for granted. I wondered, the other night, what would happen if I took that fire for granted. I figured it would do one of two things. It would rage out of control and burn down my house while I slept. Or it would eventually peter out and die. When I brought that analogy back to life, and the relationships in my life, I knew the same would be true if I took them for granted.

I don't want to disregard the fire. I want to sit in it. Until the day I die. How about you? Fire or not? Alone or not?

Come, sit a while. The flame is gently blazing. I'm tending to it for you.