Choosing to sit in the fire is choosing to sit with the pain. Choosing not to run from the pain that's slowly consuming your vitals. Of course you do run sometimes. Run to alcohol or drugs or food or T.V. or porn or adultery or gambling - name your own poison. And every escape route you take is poison, because it keeps you from doing the real grief work of sitting in the transforming fire.
Mirabai Starr lost her teenaged daughter Jenny in a car accident. Jenny had tricked her mother, taken off in her car, and lost control of the vehicle while speeding. Mirabai was - and is - a deeply spiritual woman. But at the death of her daughter, she felt as spiritually dead as Jenny was physically dead. As alone as Jenny was alone when she died.
I understand. My son Peter was alone in an ambulance when he died. I don't know if he ever came to consciousness in the speeding vehicle. I don't know if he knew he was without family. But I know.
God promises to never leave us. But grief surrounds you with a shroud of darkness so impenetrable that nothing spiritual can break through to comfort and console you. And you are simultaneously forever cold in the darkness that blots out the sun yet forever burning with the feverish torment of loss, of missing, of hungering and starving for what was before and is no more.
Sitting patiently in this fire of the torment of loss, experiencing the kaleidoscope of every emotion, is the only place and way to become like the Bush On Fire, the Burning Bush that confronted Moses in the desert. This bush, with flames dancing on every branch, was on fire but miraculously was not being consumed by the fire. This bush was on fire and yet it remained itself and did not die.
"How could this hell happen to me?" you wonder, feeling the flames of grief surround you. "Can I possibly endure these flames and not die? Not be consumed? Can I remain myself?"
If you hold still in the fire long enough, you hear the answer: " You will die, but only the parts of you that need to die will die. You will remain yourself but become transformed into more than the self you are now."
Mirabai Starr says "Tragedy and trauma are not guarantees for a transformational spiritual experience, but they are opportunities. They are invitations to sit in the fire and allow it to transfigure us."
You don't feel hope in the fire. But you feel its wings fluttering in the darkness. Its wings seem to fan you so that you can breathe inside the flames. You scream into the silence "And so Lord, where do I put my hope? My only hope is in you." To whom else could you go? Even if God is silent. Unseen. Unfelt. Your only hope is that somehow God is there and that this fire will not kill you. You scream at this God, "Why are You doing this to me?" You hope God knows why it all is happening, even if you don't.
Your only recourse is to surrender to what is happening to you even if you struggle against the reality of loss as a dying man struggles against the tightening noose around his neck.
It's amazing what the fire burns away. So many former parts of you shrivel up and die in the brutal heat. All your preconceived notions of what is important or necessary. All your petty complaints. All your minor squabbles and battles. All your preoccupations with bodily comfort and beauty. All your self-importance and posturing. All former concepts of what constitutes wealth. All that is left is the knowledge of the incalculable beauty and worth and fragility of life itself. And the knowledge of how mindless and senseless you've been, how you have ignored the real wealth of living that lay before you.
Eventually the fire of grief will burn down. You will be able to walk through your days again without collapsing. You will rediscover and treasure love. A smile will linger on your face for more and more moments. You are burned to ash. But you are not dead. You have survived. The dark has lifted to reveal the steadfast, shining, sun, moon, and stars.
The superficial shell of you is gone. What remains is the rich gold of the depths of you after the dross has been burned away. Strength. Humility. Compassion. Understanding. Patience. Endurance. You have become the Burning Bush. Fire dances along every limb of you.
Now you are on fire with a deeper understanding of love and you can proclaim the Presence of a God Who may be unseen, unfelt, and silent, but Who never leaves. A God Who is the Someone you fall into when you think you are falling into nothingness. The One Who is your only hope. And hope does not disappoint. Hope endures. Hope is the bird who sings to you as you are refined in the furnace, who fans your face with unseen wings.