Fire: The Element of Connection

Fire. 

Perhaps you saw the Royal Wedding two years ago, when Prince Harry married Megan Markle. If so, you probably remember the impassioned sermon by the Rt. Rev. Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. For full disclosure, I am an Episcopal priest, and he is the head of my church. And I’m just a bit of a fanboy. At the conclusion of his message, Bishop Curry quoted the 20th century French scientist and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who wrote that, “fire to a great extent made human civilization possible,” and that, “The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire.”

Love is fire. 

And in the Five Elements system of traditional Chinese medicine and philosophy, fire is love.

Meaning that the element of fire is about connection and joy. One commentary on the elements invites us to imagine drawing on the energy of fire to open ourselves up the world like a flower blossoming. It is in the vulnerability of connection that we come to know not only others, but also ourselves. We are meant for community. We are meant for love. 

Two years ago, I had an interaction that has made me think a lot about the way we connect with one another. The way I connect with others–and with myself. I had been in acupuncture treatment with Leah Kim for months, and during one session after a difficult period in my life, I talked about the difficulty and said, “But I’m hopeful.” And I smiled. And Leah said it was the first time she saw my real smile. I had smiled many other times, but they were polite, social, professional smiles. This was my real self revealing itself in vulnerability, trust, and hope. 

As a priest, as a helping professional, I had been trained in good boundaries. In certain contexts in my work, I couldn’t show my true feelings. But I began to wonder how much of this had seeped into my personal life. Or, indeed, how much of my personal need for emotional boundaries and walls had influenced my ministry work. 

For too much of my priesthood, I believed that I needed to hide or de-emphasize important parts of my identity and my experience for the sake of the church community. And perhaps at the time those were good choices. But now I strive to be more myself in my ministry. I occasionally talk about my husband in my sermons and often refer to him in conversations with parishioners. I talk about losing my parents. I mention that I have been in therapy at various points of my life. What I am finding is that the more vulnerable I am, within reasonable boundaries, the more powerful my ministry becomes because people can relate to me as a person, and they can then apply the things I talk about to their own lives.

It is impossible to always smile a real smile. But I hope that as we open ourselves up to the vulnerability of being in relationship with one another, we will be able to find joy in the presence of the other, so that our smile and our eyes bridge the divide and reassure each other that we are not alone, and that in fact, we as humans are, at our core, one as beings who find their authentic self in relationship with one another.

When we fully harness the energies of love, we will for the second time in the history of the world discover fire. On that day, the world will be made new. It will be a world of peace and justice. 

But until then, we can harness that energy of connection, of openness, of joy, right now in our individual, everyday lives. Go on Zoom and connect with an old friend. Let them see you smile. Go out onto the street, and even from a social distance, you can let people see the warmth in your eyes as you smile under your face covering. 

In E.M. Forster’s novel, Howard’s End, the protagonist Margaret thinks of the man she cares for and how she understands that he has always secretly believed that passion is bad. 

“And it was here that Margaret hoped to help him.  It did not seem so difficult. She need trouble him with no gift of her own. She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was her whole sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.” 

Salvation is latent in our souls. That is the message of the element of fire. Only connect!