Moment of Oneness: Season of Creation 2022 - The Elements: Fire

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The Element of Fire

Opening Prayer: All praise be yours, Holy One, through Brother fire, through whom you brighten up the night. How beautiful he is, how joyful! Full of power and strength. Amen.

Saint Francis of Assisi

Reading: The first human that counseled anyone not to “play with fire” was likely not a mother, but a Shaman who knew well the beauty and fury of the Fire Element. From a spiritual perspective Fire represents our passions, compulsion, zeal, creativity, and motivation (as in, “put a fire under it!”).

The Element of Fire has great power for forging will and determination. It is our inner light as well as a living symbol of the Divine fire that burns in every soul. Like other elementals, this means that Fire has a form in the Earth Plane and in spiritual realms. 

The Fire Element requires boundaries so you can tend it and feed it as the coals begin to dim. Be it the hearth fire, which is the heart of the home, to a ritual fire at which humans and Salamanders dance magic into being, the inherent nature of Fire is combustive and unbridled particularly when paired with the element of air. 

Fire consumes but not without giving back light and warmth. It shines without remorse, sparking the darkness with all manner of alchemical stirrings. It chants: “Come dance with me! Bring your drum! Sound out your heartbeat; give yourself to the trance.” 

(from Building Beautiful Souls by Bernadette King) 

Reading: Scripture is filled with images of light and fire as symbols of the ways in which God illuminates our world and our souls. Moses encountered God for the first time in a burning bush, and from those flames God speaks to Moses, telling him that God has heard the cry of his people and is calling upon Moses to help set the Israelites free. This vision of fire is also a call to freedom. After the escape from Egypt, God sent a pillar of fire to guide the Israelites across the desert by night as an ongoing beacon for guidance. 

In the gospel story of the transfiguration, it says that Jesus “shown like the sun and his clothes became dazzling white” (Mt 17:2). Fire and illumination again become a window onto the divine. The burning light that once appeared to Moses in the bush now radiates from Jesus himself. For Gregory Palmas, a fourth century orthodox monk, “it was the disciples who changed at the transfiguration not Jesus. Jesus was transfigured “not by the addition of something he was not, but by the manifestation to his disciples of what he really was. He opened their eyes so that instead of being blind they could see.”

(excerpt from “Brother Fire” in Water, Wind, Earth and Fire by Christine Valters Paintner)

Prayer of Thanksgiving for Fire

Holy One, we thank you for Brother Fire. 

We walk by Fire’s light. 

Even through darkened times and places, 

Fire illuminates each step along the path, 

Even when the distant view is unclear and in shadow. 

We thank you.

Fire purifies us, burning away the cluttered underbrush 

And making way for new growth to sprout forth from the ashes. 

We thank you.

Fire warms and comforts us, 

Dances for us and energizes us. 

Holy One, we thank you for Brother Fire. 

Blessing of Fire

Spirit of Fire, 

you revealed yourself through the burning bush 

and the fiery courage of Pentecost. 

Fiery Spirit, 

source of all creative power, 

kindle your holy spark within us, 

breathe into us your sacred passion, 

fill us with your flame until we have become fire, 

offering warmth and light to the world. 

Spirit of Refining Fire, 

help us to release what no longer serves us

to make room for your light to fill us. 

Blessings of Fire be upon us. 

May the light of God illuminate us 

and may the flame of love burn brightly in us. 

May we discover each day anew 

our own hidden fire and enter it fully. Amen.

Closing Song: Fire of Love by Kathy Sherman

https://youtu.be/P_6cILrBpJE