Playing With Fire

My parents were right about fire. They cautioned me not to play with it. Not to play with matches, or kerosene, or the gas burners in the kitchen. My mother was a nurse. She had seen what fire can do. My father was a fireman. He had watched lives and properties destroyed by fire.

On the other hand, we cooked our food and heated our home with fire. We shoveled coal into the roaring giant of a stove in our cellar. We learned how to start campfires with flint, steel and tinder. We made them blaze for story-telling, body-warmth and entertainment, and we turned them into glowing coals to cook the most amazing meals. My father said that sometimes he set controlled fires to fight wild fires – a concept that is still tinged (if not singed) with mystery for me.

Later I learned that our sun is a seething ball of fire, and beneath the crust of our planet lie fiery volcanoes, simmering. Wires in our house carry a kind of controlled and pulsating fire; too many plugs in a socket once made that unforgettable. Under the hood of our car an engine harnesses a sequence of fiery explosions to bring us to the park. Even my body burns calories in a continuous metabolic fire.

Fire can be released from rocks (coal, uranium), water, wind, oil, wood, or even corn. Controlled fire propels bullets, planes and rockets through space at unimaginable speeds. With it we build canyoned cities, cruise ships, and congested highways. Without it, war as we know it would cease upon the earth. Without it, nights and all enclosed spaces would be invariably and impenetrably dark.

Fire has always been associated with the Sacred. There is little wonder that fire is one of the four (or five or seven) basic elements of antiquity. No fire, no life. We are a long way from the Beltane Fires of pagan practice, but we still light candles, use incense and announce a pope’s election with smoke. Why did the writer of Acts describe the arrival of the Holy Spirit as manifested by “tongues of fire”? Why have we retained fire as the very symbol of Pentecost – the third of our three greatest Feasts?

Does the Holy Spirit reveal a dangerous side of God? Krister Stendahl, former Bishop of the Church of Sweden and Harvard Dean, once compared religion itself to nuclear energy – an immensely powerful kind of fire. Like nuclear energy, he said, religion can do an enormous amount of good when respected and properly channeled. But if misused or treated casually, it can be awesome in its destructiveness. He said this before 9/11 and the radical simple-minded extremism of today.

When affirming belief in the Holy Spirit, our ancient creed heralds “the Lord and Giver of Life.” The Holy Spirit brings liberating transformation; She is the source of all hope. The Holy Spirit is “God-as-change-agent.” Pentecost reminds us that God, like fire, is above us and beneath us, around us and within us. She is the One who brings warmth and possibility. She is the Source of life itself, and accessible to everyone one equally. She is the Holy Comforter.

But Pentecost also reveals the awesome, fiery, unpredictable and passionate side of God. Our invocation “Come Holy Spirit, Come!” may never be said easily, indifferently or with over-familiarity. For me, this prayer will always be tinged with fear and trembling. I learned long ago never to play with fire.

(The first "Fire" photo is by Jackie Keepers, from her facebook site. The second "Fire" photo is by Ernest von Rosen, www.amgmedia.com)

The Holy Mobile

If you have ever visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art, you may have seen a great and colorful mobile by Alexander Calder, one of America’s foremost modem sculptors. Calder’s mobiles are huge, welded, metallic surfaces, delicately balanced and suspended so as to move constantly with the slightest currents of air. Calder himself was one of the great and colorful characters in American life. He was noted for his love of double entendres, his shocking bluntness, and his willingness to take great artistic and personal risks. He was not noted for spirituality, piety nor for having even an inkling of religious sensibility. So the art world was puzzled when he named this Philadelphia mobile The Holy Ghost. Essays were written and theologians speculated. What could this possibly mean?

Then someone noticed that the beautiful fountain at Logan Square lay on a direct axis between the art museum and the Philadelphia City Hall. A grandiose statue of William Penn and four huge carved eagles all had been mounted on that building. They were the work of Calder’s grandfather, Alexander Milne Calder, an immigrant from Scotland. The fountain itself had been carved by Calder’s father, Alexander Stirling Calder, another prominent sculptor of the city. So naturally, when the modem “Sandy” Calder installed his work he thought of... Father, Son and... Holy Ghost!

For many people in today’s world, even in the church, talk about the Holy Spirit carries just about this level of importance. If it is thought of at all, it is considered little more than an inside joke, and as little understood. It has been called the “poor relation” of the Trinity, a bit of an embarrassment to modem minds.

In the long history of the church, on the other hand, Pentecost was and is considered the third great festival of our faith. It brings to fruition and makes real the work silently begun at Christmas and declared to the world at Easter. It celebrates the gift of the Holy Spirit, the birth of the church on earth, and the gifts of the Spirit given to us for the transformation of the world. The Holy Spirit is God’s way of being “present” now. It is “in” the Holy Spirit that we discover both our unique individuality and our deepest communion with others, our freedom and our most intimate love. The fruits of the Spirit, Paul writes to the Galatians, are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control. In the creeds the Holy Spirit is worshipped as “the Lord, the Giver of Life.” The symbols of the Spirit are many; fire, dove and wind are among the most well known.

Calder’s title for his Philadelphia mobile may have been more of a double entendre than he intended. For in 1951 he wrote, “The underlying sense of form in my work has been the system of the Universe, or a part thereof. This is a rather large model.” And twenty years later he emphasized, “I work from a very large live model.” Sounds like the Spirit to me!