"Pillar of Fire" and "Clinging, Like Fire"

"Pillar of Fire"

We are besieged by wildfires, a unique disaster in Florida's history. In Volusia County alone, more than 120,000 acres of land have burned. And there is no end in sight. Our spirits are taxed. Our emotional resources are drained. We feel cheated out of our summer, condemned to spend the next few months in air-conditioned artificial climates.

As grateful as we are to our own and to out of state fire fighters, as thankful as we are that not more structures have burned, as beholden to skill and luck and Spirit that no lives have been claimed, we are weary. We come together this morning, having abandoned the service we planned, to share with one another how we are feeling and what we are thinking about this strange situation.

Some of us have escaped. The Barcelos and the Darys and the Dunhams are far up north. Many of our children left this weekend for camp at The Mountain in North Carolina. Pat and I leave on the 15th for the Northwest. Perhaps others of you have planned trips away - either for respite or for recreation or both!

The fire evoke memories for me. I'm reminded of fires in California during my youth. California fires have to be put out. There is no help from nature. It doesn't rain for months and months on end.

I'm also reminded of the Mt. St. Helens eruption, when the top of a volcanic mountain blew up into tiny, powdery ask so fine it clogged automobile air filters miles away. We all covered our air filters with panty hose and our mouths and nose with fiber glass masks. I-5 was closed for a long time, as heavy equipment moved the ash that buried it. People east of the mountain downwind were hardest hit. After awhile, when we realized that folks in Yakima must be getting tired of dealing with ash, ash, and more ash, we Unitarian Universalists in Kirkland invited our Unitarian Universalist sisters and brothers from Yakima to come on over for a weekend with ash. They came! Everyone in our church who had room had a houseful of folks they'd never met before, visiting. Friendship were made that weekend.

Pat and I were up in Rochester, New York for eight nights and nine days, for three conferences. I'll talk about these next week. Coming home from the airport along I-4 we noticed the charred remains of forests, smoldering fires not yet out, and dancing flames of fires still active - right beside the road. When I see so much devastation my fear overcomes my faith. I think to myself, "The whole world is going up in flames. Everything is dying. Every creature, every plant. Everything is being converted to molecules of ash, never to live again." I suppose the little child deep within remembers the forest fire scene in Walt Disney's Bambi, and how terrifying that was when I saw it first when it was first released.

When I got home, I read the paper that had accumulated in our absence, each of them with fire pictures on the front page and special inserts. When we heard on the news that Ormond Beach was being evacuated, I called everyone up there to find out if they had places to go. Everyone I could reach did. Later I found out that many of you had been calling these same folks, offering your hospitality. A few people called me to let me know they had spare rooms, if they were needed, one of them dubbing my pastoral office the temporary title of "Crisis Central".

I am so thankful today that everyone is safe, even the animals. I am amazed at how many people offered space and transportation to those who in evacuated areas with horses to relocate. I gave blood one day and watched volunteers preparing for the onslaught of those of us who chose giving blood as a way to help out.

Our church school children right now are creating thank you cards for fire fighters. They will circulate among you during coffee and conversation time to collect your voluntary contributions for the purchase of supplies for the fire fighters.

However, I'm not the only one here today with memories, fears, concerns, and experience of the fires. We all have these, and we all need to talk about them and be heard. In a few minutes I'm going to ask you to form groups of three - and three only - finding people you don't know or didn't come with. In your groups, I want each of you to talk about what's happening with you right now while the other two listen. Each of you will have three minutes to speak and six minutes to listen. This is not time for conversation - that will follow the service. It's sacred time for telling our stories and for witnessing to another's experience. So I hope you will speak one at a time, each for three minutes. When you first get together choose who will go first, who will go second and who will got third. I will get you started and let you know when to switch and when to end. Now, form your triads - your groups of three. Look for people with kind faces.

"Clinging, Like Fire"

In the I Ching, the Chinese Book of Changes, one of the characters is called Li, or The Clinging, Fire. The text which talks about the character reminds us:

Fire has no definite form but clings to the burning object and thus is bright. As water pours down from heaven, so fire flames up from the earth. A luminous thing giving out light must have within itself something that perseveres; otherwise it will in time burn itself out. Everything that gives light is dependent on something to which it clings, in order that it may continue to shine. Human life on earth is conditioned and unfree, and when humans recognize this limitation and make themselves dependent upon the harmonious and beneficent forces of the cosmos, they achieve success. By cultivating in themselves an attitude of compliance and voluntary dependence, human acquire clarity without sharpness and find their place in the world.

As Unitarian Universalist we cling to our principles and purposes, our agreement about how we shall behave with one another. In times of adversity, as now, our principles guide us in making choices which enhance life rather than hinder it.

Some of us remember holy texts which remind us of God's presence with us at all times, even when we are lost and afraid. As the Israelites wandered in the desert after their exodus from slavery God guided them as a pillar of cloud by day and as a pillar of fire by night.

Indeed, God called Moses on the mission of liberating the Jews by first appearing to him as a burning bush.

Other holy texts, some of them scientific, some of them our own experience, remind us that fire is part of the cycle of life - bringing a renewal of life. Scientists in the Everglades National Park remind us that

[F]ires starting in sawgrass will burn away layers of dead and living grass until it reaches the edge of
a wet slough or steam. The ashes from the dead grass become a type of fertilizer. This fertilizer helps
new sprouts of sawgrass grow up from underground roots that were protected from the fire. Healthy
young sprouts of sawgrass are tasty treats for deer and other animals.

So, too, in pineland areas, "invading" plant may shade out young pine trees. Wildfires open the ground to sunlight for the young pines to sprout and grow. Without the fires some species of plants would die and so would the animals who depend on them.

I visited Mt. St. Helens some years after she erupted. I was amazed to see a variety of plant life coming up through the ash. The source of my knowing that all will be well is "direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves s to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life."

Let us end our time of exploring today's message with part of a poem by Robert Frost. It's called "Blueberry."

"YOU ought to have seen what I saw on my way To the village, through Mortenson's pasture to-day: Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb, Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum In the cavernous pail of the first one to come! And all ripe together, not some of them green And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen!" "I don't know what part of the pasture you mean." "You know where they cut off the woods--let me see-- It was two years ago--or no!--can it be No longer than that?--and the following fall The fire ran and burned it all up but the wall." "Why, there hasn't been time for the bushes to grow. That's always the way with the blueberries, though: There may not have been the ghost of a sign Of them anywhere under the shade of the pine, But get the pine out of the way, you may burn The pasture all over until not a fern Or grass-blade is left, not to mention a stick, And presto, they're up all around you as thick And hard to explain as a conjurers trick."

"It must be on charcoal they fatten their fruit. I taste in them sometimes the flavour of soot. And after all really they're ebony skinned: The blue's but a mist from the breath of the wind, A tarnish that goes at a touch of the hand."
 

Let the taste of these berries be a reminder to us that new life will return to us after the fires.