Although for some of us, fire can be an enormous challenge, a force that can, in the space of a few minutes, destroy everything we own.  For others, for instance, those of us who live without electricity and access to the appliances that come with it, fire is a wonderful thing.  For still others, for people who spend time outdoors, camping, hiking, and backpacking, fire can be a welcome comfort on a chilly evening.  And for some more of us, a fire is an added delight in an already warm house on a winter night.
     Many decades ago, when I was doing community development and activism in East Texas, I often visited homes, homes in the poorest parts of the county in which I worked, homes whose sole heating source was a fire.  With dirt floors.  In the United States of America.  Given the systemic racism of the region, I was not surprised:  many people of color were excluded from the economic mainstream.  But I was appalled.
     In many religious traditions, Rastafarian to Hinduism to Zoroastrianism to Judaism and Christianity, however, fire plays a formative role in spirituality.  Symbolically and figuratively, fire is a great purifier.  It speaks of refinement, it speaks of enablement, it speaks of power.  Fire is a phenomenon that frames the call of our lives, a summons to step into the greater power around us so as to capture what we otherwise cannot.  To find the hidden truth of reality.  To embrace the knowing unknown.
     In this week of Pentecost, a Jewish as well as Christian holiday, think about fire.  Think about its wonder and its tragedy, yes, but think also about its posture of transcendence, a transcendence that opens a new world of light.  A light that never ends.