December 5 - Keep Me Burning
“Oh Love that fires the sun, keep me burning…” (lyric by Bruce Cockburn)
The Christmas season is perfectly timed. As the weather gets chillier, we’re reminded of our amazing, homeothermic presence in the world. When well fed with Christmas cookies and well insulated with the ensuing weight gain, and perhaps a wool scarf, our body heats itself, maintaining a consistent core temperature of 98 degrees, more or less. Much of the Christmas cheer we witness, I believe, is an acknowledgement between passing strangers of this stupendous fact; that in a cold world, we are beacons of perpetual warmth. Humans and other creatures radiate warmth that becomes visible when it hits the frosty, crystalline air—ruach, the spirit-wind, the breath of life, of God.
We possess a warmth which seems out of place in the winter months. Like Moses’ burning bush, there is a fire within us that consumes only our imaginations. Poets and mystics dance circles round this flame to the rhythms of the ancients, and even the plainest of us know what it is to warm our hands over the embers of compassion. Something within us knows that life is essentially mysterious, miraculous, and gratuitous. We are drawn to each other’s heat, seeing in it something of our own. This is, perhaps, why we stargaze and light candles. At advent, these things symbolize the coming of a great light into the world, a child of the Spirit whose fire still animates and intrigues us today.
-Phil
Image by the 16th century mystic Jacob Boehme, illustrating the ruach as a dove.
posted by Rev. Amy Sens @ 8:24 AM
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