Fire Tending.
- Linda Lueng
- Jan 25
- 9 min read
Updated: Feb 20
Dear Ones,
There is a Taizé chant that has been echoing throughout the season of Advent and now into Epiphanytide. As the collective unlit night we are moving through continues to feel ever more dense, the words return again and again:
“Within our darkest night,you kindle a fire that never dies away,never dies away.”
These words are a hauntingly beautiful reminder of the Christic fire revealed, enduring, and already burning within us, even when the night feels long.
As the season of Epiphany continues to unfold, we are reminded that revelation is not a single moment of brilliance, but a way of living that asks for our sustained participation. Epiphany does not simply show us the Christic within, it entrusts us with its care.
During this season, the ancient practice of fire tending offers a living image for what it means to hold our post and be a participant in the Christic Realm (World 12). Fire tending is not about forcing a blaze or standing back to admire the flames. It is a practice of relationship, of attention, timing, restraint, and care. The one who tends the fire learns to listen, to know when to add firewood, when to wait, and when to allow the flames to settle so that a deeper, steadier heat can form. So it is with the Christic fire within and among us.
In The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 10, Yeshua speaks of his own post in this way: “See, I have sown fire into the cosmos, and I shall guard it carefully until it blazes.” This is the language of stewardship and guardianship. The Christ does not merely ignite the fire but also shares in its tending.
As we have explored in earlier reflections on Epiphany, our task in the Ray of Creation during this season is the ongoing formation, birthing, and manifestation of the Christic Realm within our own lives which is simultaneously the life of the world. This fire is not something we generate through moral striving or heroic effort. It is already latent within. And yet, once kindled, it must be tended.
From the vantage point of Worlds 48 and 96, this tending is costly. Fire requires fuel, something to be burned. What nourishes the Christic fire is often precisely what our individual and collective smaller selfhood would rather hold onto: certainty, speed, self-protection, familiar programs for happiness. To the individual and collective egoic self, the careful feeding of this inner fire can feel like loss, disorientation, even death.
And yet, as with any true hearth, something essential happens when we remain faithful to the tending. The fire begins to organize space around itself. It gathers us. It warms what has grown cold. It illuminates what was previously unseen. Slowly, an inner structure capable of bearing greater intensity begins to form, one that does not collapse under the weight of Love.
We are the fire tenders. Called to remain rooted, awake, and present. Called to bear witness to what has been lurking in unlit territories, both within ourselves and in the world. Called to act with wisdom and mētis: attuned, responsive intelligence rather than force or haste.
Tending the Christic fire cannot be rushed. As Cynthia Bourgeault reminds us, Christic energies are real energies and they are strong. Without the gradual formation of an individual and collective inner vessel—without patience, grounding, and consent—we risk either dimming the fire through fear, or feeding it in distorted and destructive ways through the isolated agendas of our individual and collective little Is and superego.
Fire tending teaches us that faithfulness is rarely dramatic. Most of the work happens in small, often unseen gestures: standing rooted in the Greater Selfhood of I Am; showing up; offering spacious attention; engaging in deep listening; staying through the quiet hours when nothing seems to be happening. And yet it is precisely this kind of presence that allows the fire to burn cleanly and steadily, offering warmth and light inwardly, and for others.
Epiphanytide invites us into this way of life: to tend and to let the fire burn bright, to serve the ongoing revelation of the Christic here and now. As we consent to this continual rhythm of death and birth, may we learn to care for the Christic fire with humility and patience, trusting that revelation unfolds in God’s time, not ours.
With fire,
Heather
Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses
*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*
Monday, January 19th with LeMel
Reading: Forty-One
For Beginnings
Open my eyes, O Eternal, to change;
Fill me with longing for possibilities.
Let my life before be stepping blocks
To what you want me to become.
Open my eyes, O Eternal, to change;
Let me write beyond my narrow descriptions
To begin a new narrative,
Underlined with your name.
Open my heart, O Eternal
To put you ever before me;
Help me discard the insubstantial
And replace it with Your words.
Open my life, O Eternal, to fulfillment.
Where before were shadows
Let Your truths live in my life,
Sustaining my actions.
Turn me back to You, O Eternal,
Back to long before I cannot remember
That beckon my soul.
Turn me back, O Eternal,
Opening to change.
-- From Debbie Perlman in Flames to Heaven: New Psalms for Healing & Praise, former Psalmist-in-Residence at Beth Emet The Free Synagogue
Chant: Whispering Open
All before are insubstantial shadows
Replaced now with Spirit filled words
Whispering me open to transformation
Tuesday, January 20th with Faye
Reading: "When we say the world has lost its sanity, what we may actually be saying is that the feedback loops that reinforced a prior balance of powers have collapsed, and the biases once ritualized into norms no longer hold the weight of truth.
“And when we long for sanity’s return, we often mean: bring back the predictability of yesterday’s arrangements, even if those arrangements were themselves complicit in quiet violences.
“Thus, the betrayal is not new. It isn’t a fall from purity, anymore than the right-ward swing of the pendulum is an affront to a grandfather clock. It is an unveiling of the fact that purity was never there.
“The "return to 1945" is hardly a return. The logic of predation was always there, lurking in the creases of dignified diplomacy, in the moral climate that governs the neurotypical subject. Rather than a return, I'd suggest that this is an exfoliation. A peeling back. A wound remembered. A crack showing what has always been beneath: the brutal genealogies of power, the erotic pull of empire, the myth of a moral center. What feels like descent may in fact be disclosure.
“And in this sense, the work is not to restore sanity, but to grieve it. To gather in the ruins of its architecture and listen for what still wants to live, what wants to be grown differently, from different seeds. Our work is not against individuals, but within mycelial fields of posthumanist desire. It is Eros we must meet. It is the trickster Exu we must convene around.
“This is not an anomaly. This is a reckoning.”
– Báyò Akomolafe
Chant: Christ near to all, the Light in all, the Seed sown in the hearts of all – words of Robert Barclay put to chant by Paulette Meier
Wednesday, January 21st
Reading: “Awakening to this world requires willingness to open our minds and hearts. Each issue is the result of multiple causes and conditions, and we must stay curious to understand cause and effect. Every protestor who goes into the streets is experiencing pain and rage. [Every ICE Agent, ]. Without condoning or allowing destructive actions, compassion allows us to connect with the protestors as fellow human beings.
“As Warriors for the Human Spirit, we have chosen an identity that gives us these capacities for discernment and compassion. We have chosen to protect the human spirit. We do not deny or withdraw from the pain of this world. We know it will get worse because we know the pattern of collapse, and because we pay attention. We are dedicated to serving this world as the pain and suffering intensify. This blessed identity calls us forward to a life of meaning and purpose, a true path of contribution.” — Margaret J. Wheatley, Who Do We Choose to Be?, p. 101
Chant: And God said I am made whole by your life, every soul, every soul completes me
— Marilyn Scott
Thursday, January 22nd
Reading: “Our Father, we are burdened with our recollections and we struggle beneath the weight of our memories. We seek how we may offer all to Thee in the quietness of our own inward parts, in the silence of this place. Brood over ourselves and our recollections with Thy spirit until at last there may grow up within us insight, wisdom, and new levels of sensitiveness that we may be redemptive in all that we do this day and beyond. Our need, O God, is great!” – Howard Thurman
Chant: Stilled and quiet is my soul, in [your] presence, I take my rest – Sister Helen Marie Gilsdorf, RSM via Catherine Regan
Friday, January 23rd with Catherine
Reading: We have before us the glorious opportunity to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of our civilization. There is still a voice crying out in [words] that echo across the generations, saying: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you, that you may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
Making room for this love to grow in our hearts…. Buddhist Forgiveness Meditation
We begin by asking forgiveness for having hurt others:
“There are many ways that I have hurt and harmed others knowingly and unknowingly in this life. Many times that I have caused sorrow, betrayed or abandoned others. I remember these now, I feel these… In the many ways I have hurt and harmed others out of my fear, out of my pain or confusion, I ask their forgiveness. May I be forgiven.”
Asking forgiveness for how we have hurt ourselves:
“There are so many ways I harm myself, knowingly and unknowingly, abandon or betray myself, cause myself pain. I remember these now. I picture and feel the sorrows I’ve caused to myself… And in the many ways I have hurt or harmed myself out of my confusion, out of fear, pain, I offer myself forgiveness and mercy. I forgive myself. I hold myself with kindness, mercy, and forgiveness. May I be forgiven.”
Forgiving others who have hurt us:
“In the many ways others have hurt me, abandoned or betrayed me, knowingly and unknowingly, out of their confusion, out of their anger and pain, out of their fear and ignorance, I see these now and feel what I have carried… And to the extent that I am ready, I offer forgiveness. I release you. I release my hatred or anger if I am ready. I will not put you out of my heart.”
And now, breathing easily in and out of the chest, let yourself feel the breath gently in your heart.
“Hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone is healed.
Chant: God is Forgiveness Dare to forgive and God will be with you. God is forgiveness. Love and do not fear
– Taizé
Sunday, January 25th with Catherine
Reading: Unison Benediction
Return to the most human,nothing less will nourish the torn spirit,the bewildered heart,the angry mind:and from the ultimate duress,pierced with the breath of anguish,speak of love.
Return, return to the deep sources,nothing less will teach the stiff hands a new way to serve,to carve into our lives the forms of tendernessand still that ancient necessary pain preserve.
Return to the most human,nothing less will teach the angry spirit,the bewildered heart;the torn mind,to accept the whole of its duress,and pierced with anguish…at last, act for love.
-- May Sarton
Chant: Deeply Descend Into I Am
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