Fire

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Midwifing the Soul:

What fascination this with fire

that causes gods to give and then withhold it

making theft a necessary crime?

And what of ancient ones who labored long

or perchance in purely accidental flinting action

discovered they could so create?

And what theology espoused an evil entity

where flames engulf perpetually the damned?

Sacred writ is filled with references

from Eden’s entrance guardians

to  apocryphal revealing

where now and then emerges an image

so profound it lingers long for pondering

and many meditations may invoke.

Need we a myth of stealing fire from God

to warm our snow-cold  souls?

Need we the confidence that flinting of our wills

can cause the man-made miracle?

Need we to cast aside in our enlightenment

the burnt-out notion of a purgatory flame?

Or is there truth within the stealing, flinting, damning

for us who nurse burned fingers from

the flames that stolen matches lit

that speaks more plain to us of holiness and purging

than all the burning bushes of all time?