A Beautiful Fire
…in which Lydwine offers memory-as-parable for the startling imminence of the Incarnation.
Some years ago, in the Carolinas, we knew a man who was a wizard, or called himself one. He could make things happen in a way that others couldn’t, saying things like “I hope you fall down them stairs,” or “you gon’ crash that car,” to disastrous and cruel effect. His power, he claimed, was tied to a ceramic monkey — its provenance unknown — buried deep in the ground outside his trailer, and though he certainly still enjoyed its potency, the thought of an eventual reckoning for all its gifts had clearly begun to trouble him.
He had a bad history with fire. He once destroyed an entire forest accidentally with a handful of matches and an old truck tire. Careless with cigarettes, he frequently set his bed burning, waking up to his wife dousing the blankets with glasses of water, or two-liter bottles of Cheerwine.
We joined him, one summer afternoon, for a picnic on the banks of the Catawba River, a whole group of us, drinking and smoking and swimming, eating sandwiches and casseroles. Toward the end of the day the wizard — his name was Gary — decided he wanted to start a fire, so grabbed his old red gascan, made his way to the firepit, and poured on some gasoline.
But, flying high on booze and dope and pills, he forgot he’d already started a fire earlier in the day, and that beneath that spread of harmless looking grey ash was a bed of hot, red coals.
When the gas hit, the fire erupted, as though trying to wrest the gascan from his hands, and suddenly the right side of his body was engulfed in flame. He threw the gascan down and started spinning in place, like a child’s toy top. Someone yelled “Get in the water!” He broke into a crazy sideways run, then dove headfirst into the shallows, lying there in a broken heap.
We all ran for the water in a panic, scrambling to get away from the explosion, the burning man. All but one woman (a relative at the time, but who later broke apart her family for love of a Wiccan priestess she met online) who started wandering toward the fire, and toward the gascan lying there, still burning at the spout. She walked right over to it and picked it up.
All of us in the water had the same shared thought — What the hell is she doing? — until one of us realized, mercifully, she must be confused and yelled to her: “It’s a gascan!”
There was a flash of recognition — she hopped into the air, the gascan tumbling away from her, and then came running out into the water with her arms up high yelling “I thought it was a log! I thought it was a log! I thought it was a burning log!”
The wizard was fine, of course. He was a wizard, after all. He had burns on his hand and leg and along his arm, but didn’t seem to care. When his hand started to blister he tore it open with his teeth, twirled it in the air, and started chasing the women and children up and down the beach, hooting and laughing.
We remember watching him burn, the flames spiraling up his body and toward the sky, the dumb animal look in his eyes as the pain and panic overwhelmed. We thought, How can this be happening? This doesn’t happen. How can this be real? How can this come at us out of nowhere?
But it didn’t come out of nowhere, not really. It’s just that so much of what’s at work in the world is hidden, waiting — like hot coals under grey ash, like grace… like God Himself, nestled in a virgin’s womb.
In this season of expectation, as we pray together at table with those we love, lighting our Advent candles one by one, we must remind ourselves God often seeks to confound us. We can’t see all things clearly. We often misunderstand His possibilities.
But sometimes, when the time is right, when the veil comes undone…
I have come to set fire to the earth, the Lord tells us, and how I wish it were already burning!
To which we are meant to reply, Come, Lord Jesus!
Those words are so easy, aren’t they? But we can’t really know what we’re saying. We can’t really know what we’re asking for. Can we?
The world hides a beautiful fire. We’ve seen it.
We’re all of us longing to burn.
You are playing with fire here. Are you sure that is wise? All metaphors have a tendency to run away with us, but when fire moves, it moves fast and spells destruction.