A World-Renewing Fire*

Every three or four years, the 3-acre native prairie which we established with the help of the DNR and the Fish and Wildlife Service a number of years ago needs burning.  It is a process that, for millions of years - billions, more likely -  happened naturally courtesy of lightening and such; but we tend to prefer our fires a little more controlled here in the neighborhood of our home. And so it is that when conditions are right - meaning “dry enough” and “still enough,” the contractor appears with his crew and reduces the 6-7 foot tall grasses - the blue stems and switchgrass, the little bluestem and the June grass - to ash.  And so it happened again last weekend.

Ferocious in its execution and stark in its aftermath, the burning is, nonetheless, therapeutically and horticulturally beneficial.  The fire clears the accumulated detritus and debris that builds up across the seasons; it stunts the invasives, strengthening and vitalizing the forbs and the grasses, allowing them time to get a head start on growth.  The fire is nature's channel of resiliency - deepening roots, opening seeds, and clearing the accumulated obstacles to growth.

I try to remember all that as I survey the scene through the windows that have sequestered us these past several weeks as a global pandemic has forced us into isolation.  Our beloved prairie wreaks with a charred stench; it looks like a scar; and it feels like a death, though the truth of it, I have come to trust, is exactly the opposite.

I don’t know if, analogically - metaphorically - any of that has any resonance in this season outside of all of our windows that feels, for all the world, like death.  But I am not unaware of all the accretions that build up in our cultures and lives that need purging; and the invasives that intervine our souls whose stunting would happily benefit us; and the hard-shelled seeds that only calamity can encourage open.  

I recall the stories and insights of all the spiritual mystics - people like Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Julian of Norwich, Francis and Clare and more modern ones since for whom "suffering" was the doorway to profound enlightenment and depth; "torment" the window opening onto ecstasy and glory; for whom "humility" and "surrender" were discipleship - quite in contrast to our preference for tranquility and pleasure, and our determination to dominate and control.  

Concurrently I recall all those biblical images of loss and gain, death and life that form the furrows of our faith…

…and I hope there is some transfering resonance.  We grieve the loss of precious lives in this viral fire, there is no burnishing that pain.  But we do not lament the exposure and loss of the lies we tell ourselves and each other, the arrogances we animate, the bigotries we protect, the delusion of independence we pridefully salute.  These, perhaps, will all beneficially come to ash.  

I try to see the blackened prairie through different eyes - vision shaped, in part, by Frederich Buechner who noted through the eyes of faith that, in God’s hands, “the worst thing is never the last thing.”

And so we take a deep breath, never minding the occasional residual whiff of fiery smoke, and continue our work as best we are able. 

* Adapted from a meditation offered to the Trustees of Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth TX, April 24, 2020; the title modifying a phrase by Wendell Berry.