A Fire in the Desert

Hearing each day about wildfires raging across the West, I thought to share this piece… written on a vision quest while a fire raged on a mesa above us…

It’s a new beginning, a new day. A barrel cactus blooms, an eruption of vermilion splashed on the sage-green palette of this desert… gentle, subtle, and quiet in its beauty. Sunlight dances on spider webs, and a prickly pear raises its spiny head from the soil. Morning doves coo ever-so softly, but other birds send out sharper notes. Yellow flowers, thin and wispy, sway in the breeze.

The faint smell of smoke drifts past from a fire on the mesa above, touched off by the crackling thunder of yesterday. The creative spark – alive, electric, and destructive…. We watch and check the wind, cautious lest it come our way.

Christ, Moses, Mohammed… they all came to the desert. Wandering in its incessant harshness and impossible beauty, it was here they spoke to Spirit, listened to the voice of God, suffered the temptation of the world and its treasures. Moses – heeding this call – stood and conversed with the burning bush. We have a thousand of them on the mesa above us, but our minds run in more predictable routes, concerned with safety, security, and loss of possessions.

The gods have spoken, and the hillside has burst into flame! Our attention wanders. Our mind flutters like a moth, but is persistently brought back. Something whispers, “Go there! Speak! Listen!”

This god has expressed himself in fire. What do you have to say, Emissary of lightning, smoke, and thunder? What is your message? Do you tell us of heat, burnout, or an approaching time of purification?

Old growth is being swept away to make a home for the new to abide, and this clearing is hot, raging, and destructive. Letting go of the old is never easy. Umbilical cords must be tied off and severed. Letting go is rarely gracious. The boy screams for his mother as he is carried off to join the circle of men in the woods. A release is required, and often this entails smashing, burning, burying… cutting off, bloodletting… peeling, ripping, tearing, cleaving.

Separation, discrimination, severance… The symbol of the sword is sacred, and its blade cuts both ways. Fire – the center of home and hearth, stolen from the gods, and divinity itself – blisters, maims, and turns to ashes. The primal spark, bringer of life, the male principle – dynamic and penetrating – pulses onto and into the receptive earth, and it lays waste in drought, famine, and desert. It is holy, this heavenly power. It is energy, the motivating force. Breathing, eating, consuming oxygen and fuel, it is the flame which ignites in our very cells. It is desire, vitality, Father Sun, creator, prime mover, first cause. It is God – warm, nurturing, and demonic – drawing and driving us, and it rages unchecked on the hillside. Shall we worship or flee?

The power of fire can comfort or burn. The waters of life cool, quench, or drown. The breeze wraps around and brings us breath; calms, refreshes, and revives us; then blows us away. The earth bestows body and belonging. It feeds, befriends, succors, and supports us, until it slides or swallows us, and we are buried and taken back.

The One Glorious God wears many faces: darkness and light, night and day, male and female. He is Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, a deity of death and resurrection, bearer of salvation and Armageddon, the desirer of human sacrifice. He dances in a ring of fire above us – lord of initiation or injury, source of the sacred wound. He’s the god of radiance, his thunderbolts – fiery and threatening – full of light as the earth erupts and cracks open. He comes in the cutting, the crucifixion, the scarring, the sun dance…. the shaman torn apart and dismembered.

The goddess can be wet, watery, womb-like… slick, slimy, and blood-soaked. Smiling in submersion and suffocation, delighted to be drowning in deluge; in her arms we swim, surrender, and are swallowed by the whale. Fluid, and close friend of Fate, she’s the sacred source of all life and sweeps us away in the flood.

Spirit is like air, the foundation of existence. It’s inspiring, omnipresent, invisible, and it roars, uproots, and flattens as it twists itself into a dark funnel to suck out your breath at last.

Set your eyes upon the god and the demon, the Buddha with the sword. He has come to cut away illusion; break open the shell; to level, bury, and burn as he makes way for new growth. The lamb of god must meet the butcher; the path to heaven begins with nails and a cross. We conjure up angelic images of transformation… envision honeyed meadows with butterflies, lighthearted and free, but dark Kali dances to different music. With dripping fangs and a necklace of skulls, the goddess of change coaxes the caterpillar to constrict itself, break all boundaries, dissolve, and perish.

To know eternal life, we must die; to find the greater self, the smaller must be torn asunder. We want the ecstatic, but not the transforming knife. We would know our animal nature, but not be devoured; rise to the heavens, but run from the fire. But death is our sacrifice, the sacred wound, the necessary offering at the doorway to another world. Blood comes with birth, and it colors the good red road on the path to the heart.

Our ancestors, champions of the great ball court, climbed those stone steps to the altar, content and proud. As warriors they went willingly to their dying, welcoming the blade, giving themselves to the gods and presenting their hearts to the sky.

Welcome this breaking of boundaries, the transformative tearing, those sacred surrenders to life! The shields must soften. The container must crack, crumble, or be crushed. Every shell must split apart for the seed to grow. If it does not open – by fire or water, to warmth or wetness – the living core will perish.

Above us on the hillside, God is speaking as the bushes burn. We might hear him if we didn’t talk so much. The illumination is captivating and alluring, but we define it as danger, or a distraction to our more important conversations. We could come closer, but our tendency is to move away.

But something is summoning us. It tempts us to draw near, to walk on this bed of coals, to step into a wheel of fire and follow the light in the desert. It is mesmerizing… shimmering, pulsing, and alive. Perhaps here, in this ring of blackened acres, glows the center of our purpose, inviting us to walk in wonder, approach in awe. We are called to enter that circle as a moth drawn to flame, spiraling closer and faster until – in the final moments of ecstasy and dissolution – everything is forgotten, and we know ourselves completely.

From Letters to the River — A Guide to a Dream Worth Living