Preserving the Fire

I came across a piece I saved from the February 19, 2019 issue of NCR about the need for warmth, which, believe it or not, may be even more relevant now that it is summer rather than chilly mid-winter. In August, our warmth is easy to gain; just step outside. We become complacent about how to stay warm. But in winter, we have to do some work to stay that way.

Tom Roberts in his February article includes this paragraph:  “In her manifesto, The Fire in These Ashes: A Spirituality of Contemporary Religious Life, Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister compares the current state of religious life to ‘grieshog,’ an Irish term for the practice of burying warm coals under ashes to preserve the embers in order to start a fire next morning. ‘It is a holy process, this preservation of purpose, of energy, of warmth and light in darkness. What we call death and end and loss in our lives, as one thing turns into another, may, in these terms be better understood as grieshog, as the preservation of the coals. As refusing to go cold.’

I want to see us as the “warm coals” buried under the ‘ashes’ of the hierarchical church trying not to let ourselves be smothered while we work to preserve our embers for a new day. And Joan Chittister is certainly right that it is “holy,” albeit frustratingly difficult, exhausting work, to preserve so much stored up energy, wisdom, and possibility, to not let it die in the dark and cold.

In the old days in rural Ireland, an Irish friend recently told me, the first task of the morning was to rake the coals to “bring out the fire” for the day. I love that phrase. I love thinking of all of us, each morning, “bringing out our fire” for the day.

In our summery soft times, we can grow complacent about the need for this fire. It’s the lazy, hazy time; we need the rest to restore us after this endless tending; and, surely, it’s already hot enough.

But that’s only exterior heat, the kind we don’t have to work for. It’s the interior fire the ashes are primed to smother.

And so, even though it seems already hot enough, even though we are now quite comfortable, we still rise to tend, to preserve, to ready ourselves to bring justice to our church and our church to justice. It’s, after all, a holy task, and it is ours.