Saturday, December 10, 2011

Saturday morning at camp

Am sitting here at Monroe Lodge at camp in front of the fire.
I got here last night before anyone else and really enjoyed the gift of solitude in front of a fire.
Al had put the logs on with lots of paper underneath and a lighter in front. Presumably, I light the paper and the fire is produced.

Unfortunately I lit the papers and they burned and the logs did not take hold. It took a while, more paper, more moving the logs around, more ignition to get it going.

And once I had it, I found myself reflecting on the whole fire thing. At Karl Road Christian Church we have a motivating statement: "Ignited by God, Changing the World" and I have learned that to get ignited is not always easy. It is important to have enough kindling and
Alers to get it going. I also found myself thinking about those people who become like the embers and the greying logs...whose warmth is such that anyone can "catch" the experience of Gods love by being near them. But then there are the folks who are like the logs that are "green" and resistant to the fire. Not new ideas, I know, but this is how zi think today.

Anyway, I woke up and the fire that was started last night was still going and I learned the most important "lesson" that I keep learning. That even though I may be one of the leaders of this retreat, it is not my sole responsibility to keepnthe fire burning, I am grateful for the women who...in the middle of the night....got up and put a log or two on the fire. It takes a community to keep a fire going.

It is good to be here today. Therenwill be women here from every church I have served. And we are all aging together and continuing ...in our own way...to feed the fire of our faith.

God is good. All the time.

2 comments:

Me said...

Fire

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.
So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.

~ Judy Brown ~

margot connor said...

Wow...great poem!