Fire-keepers

“Revered sages**… mine the jewels concealed in the shadows of the human condition and lift them to the light. We respond to these masters because of the mastery imprinted in our own souls. We recognize the magic in them because it mirrors the magic in us. They remind us not only who we could be, but who we already are. All we need to do is train our gaze to the beauty they are pointing to and weave it into the tapestry of our days. A great soul can animate your blueprint for greatness. A wise being can reawaken your inherent wisdom. A person who is very loving can open the way for you to have a direct experience of love.”

~ Mirabai Starr, Ordinary Mysticism

Oh, truth. How lovely to find in someone else the same fire that burns deep inside us. How baffling to hear our own hearts’ truths spoken from outside of ourselves. It can be disorienting, knocking us off kilter, to finally hear the words that have only been uttered in silence, in our deepest places, in the very seat of our soul. Is it possible that we are not alone after all?

Yes.

It is.

“All cognition is re-cognition.
You see it because it’s already you.
You know is over there because you already know it in here, at the deepest level of your being… All a good spiritual teacher can do is give words and verbalization so that you find yourself saying, ‘Yes, I already know this. He may be drawing it out for me, but this insight is not coming from Richard.’”

~ Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance

What a gift, to happen upon a teacher that has this power, to bridge the chasm between souls and draw the divine out into the light. I am quite honestly overflowing with gratitude these days for the multitude of sages and fire-keepers who have tumbled into my life in recent years. Wisdom embodied in so many human forms, revealing the Christ-soaked world, touching in from that place of pure darkness and divine spark.

What a gift.

“There is a tension–a paradox– for me when I think about where we gain real wisdom. Is it lived experience, or is it the distilled transmission from books or scriptures? My answer most days is: both. Contemplative life will always transform us, but so will our teachers in the many forms they take.”

~ Mirabai Starr, Ordinary Mysticism

Experience, the driving force of all living faith.
Experience, the refining furnace of life.
Experience, the only way we touch God.

But how do we define experience?

Is that combustion of spirit that occurs when the divine in us is sparked by the divine in another, even if only through the written or spoken word, any less than the ignition that fires at a sunset held from start to finish? Is it any less than the vast and dizzying opening out that can occur in a single moment of true and gifted meditation? Is the experience of soul sharing lessened in some way for it’s coming indirectly?

I don’t think so.

On the contrary, I think that there are times and places where art can deliver transcendence in a more pure and undiluted form than so-called direct experience. I think that the written mode of transmission, right alongside visual art and barrier-breaking music, often open portals that might otherwise be closed. They find a way in when no direct knocking will do. They help us out of ourselves, ironically to an elevated place of, you guessed it, direct experience.

*My dear Alexsi, with just a touch of his own illumination, a true gift*

What a gift.

Mother Nature. The original scriptures.
Metaphor. Poetry. Music.
Books, sacred and not-so-sacred. (Is there a difference?)
Tradition, Liturgy, Ritual.
Science. Curiosity. Courage.

Fertile fields.

Forage widely.

And Love Loudly.

For you, too, are a teacher.

“You, too, are a source of illumination, in ways you may never guess.”
~Mirabai Starr, Ordinary Mysticism

** Starr’s original list of examples, if you must know, included the likes of Clare of Asisi and Howard Thurman and Trevor Hall. My heart nearly burst at Trevor Hall. There are so many musicians that work spiritual magic, but Trevor Hall… Trevor Hall has saved me. You need a quick example, methinks…

I shared a fav back a bit. How about the live version…