Building a Fire

Today I built my first fire alone. Odd that it's taken me over half a century to do something so basic. It's not that I've never been around fires or helped build them. I've gathered wood and watched others build fires; I've kept fires going; but there have always been others (brother, husband, children, friends) around to do the actual starting. In fact, often others have wanted to be the ones making the fire and I, not caring much one way or the other, let them.

It's a chilly day today and here in the South you take advantage of those chilly days! I love a fire in the fireplace and so I began asking those around me if they wanted to build a fire. "Sure!" came the responses.

But no one actually got up to do it. In fact no one but me was in the family room to enjoy a fire. So I went out and gathered some small stuff to go with the larger logs already piled in our wood carrier beside the hearth. I crumpled newspaper and piled on a few little twigs and lit a match. Fire burned brightly for a few moments and then went out. "Hmmm..." I thought to myself. "This isn't as easy as it looks."

So I began again. I stuffed more crumpled newspaper under some kindling size pieces of wood and lit a match and began two areas of fire. It blazed up and then began dying down. "Can't have this!" So I blew ! Up it blazed again. Thus began the cycle of blowing, waiting, fire burning down, blowing again, fire blazing up. Finally, it got going well and stayed lit.

While I was kneeling in front of the fireplace blowing and waiting, I thought that emotions and thoughts in my own life are a bit like that fire. As long as I give them what they need to burn (blow on them), they will. But if I don't feed them, they die. Some of those thoughts and emotions are ones I want to burn on their own: love, kindness, consideration, contentment. Others are ones I'd just as soon let die: envy, bitterness, self-centeredness.

What are you blowing on?