We Are One Flame

SoulCards(c) Deborah Koff-Chapin

I feel the fire in my belly, yet deeper . . . rising flames of inspiration transforming into passionate action. The flame is sporadic, though, requiring constant tending for winds blow and rain falls and it is important to keep some wood dry and safe to lay upon the coals after a storm.


A furnace needing replacement, leaking toxins around corroded intersecting channels of life . . . scattered, depleted fuel draining focus and creating overwhelm by all that needs to be done, all that is needing me, all that is in my mind, all the thoughts . . . 
all . . . ALL . . . overwhelm . . . 


Torrential rainfall and high winds that blow and smother my flame that is fragile to begin with--needing heat, needing warmth--the cold overwhelming the fire.


I can feel myself giving in to the pressure and crumbling like a burnt piece of wood that is a fragile shell of itself. More wood needed--fresh, strong, green, flexible, able to withstand the pressure and be shaped into a new structure, a new life that is calling.


All the elementals come out to play together, but the bullies grab the toys they know will taunt and tease and weaken the susceptible child. Pour a bucket of water on her and make her cry. Blow smoke in her face so she can't breathe. She crumbles into dust, gray ashes of herself that are trampled upon. Where is that fresh wood she asked for? Where is the torch that she needs to re-light the fire in her belly?


Sit. Wait. Maybe it will come if she is still. Step out of the wind for a minute, sheltered by the line of tall trees. Get under a shelter of broad canopies of thickly growing leaves and branches where the rains can't reach. Right now, for a few minutes, she just needs to light the fire from the Source she knows is here somewhere. The fresh wood is here, stacked inside if she can find it. The torch always burning, carried within and without, she does not need to seek it elsewhere. Seek.


She knows an ember still burns warmly and glows with infinite promise. She turns over the coals all ashy, soft and gray as the winter sky at dusk, each one cool and crumbling, gently placing each to the side her fingers leaving prints of past pain and pressure. Ahhh . . . there, a tiny orange glow, see it pulsating--itty-bitty--but that's all she needs as she gathers puffs of dry moss and the most fragile twigs unused by the wrens in building their nests, left as gifts for her use, and the fuel quickly begins to burn from the gentle heat of the ember, bursting into beautiful flames that stretch diaphanous yellow fingers out asking "more, please." And so she adds larger and dryer tinder of twigs, then branches, then trunks who offered themselves in sacrifice to the flame of determination and drive, passion and perseverance, all from the love of Gaia, the Angel of Change, who lights her torch from the fire now burning steadily once more for ours is the same flame. 


We are One Flame.