Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said, “Abba Joseph, as much as I am able, I keep the small rule, I fast, I keep vigil, I pray.  What else should I do?”  Abba Joseph then stood up, and stretched his hands up to the heavens, and said, “Why not be turned into fire?”

 I’ve carried this story from the Desert Fathers around with me for twenty-eight years, rutted in memory, held in the heart’s bank.  It forms a point around which I circle – this fire at the center, this Love, yes, Passion, this leaning into Life. This longing to become the fire that I am, we are, that is.  And now, now, having walked around these words my entire adult life, I am ready, or not ready but willing, to walk into them, to cast my fuel into the fire.  I want to burn, to be of use, to kindle and roar. 

 It starts with one step. 

Do not save me.  I want to spend what is mine, prodigal and true.  I want to spend what I have been given so that, at the end, I am cinder and ash.  And I will have done just this:   lit up the days I have been given. 

What else is there to do?

                                                                                                                          Susan

~ by Stephanie on 02/06/2010.

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