Fire

Top caveman discovery  , quick . Ok , right, you saw the title so yeah , fire was the first thing to come to my mind too . Well full disclosure here , it was second  but since it's a christian blog I wasn't going to say sex came to mind first but there it is . I'm a Neanderthal . Sue me . If I have been a cave woman the answer would be curtains .

My first experience with flame was on my first birthday . Dad smoked so I'd seen fire before . He pulled the magic paper sticks from his pocket and flicked his wrist and fire would appear . Pretty . But he was 6 feet tall and I was only about a foot , so I never got up close and personal with it until my birthday . Mom set me on the table in front of a cake and grabbed the Kodak . I didn't know what it was (the cake) 'cause it was my first birthday so I touched it . Tasty . There was a stick mashed into the middle of the cake and dad did his wrist flicking thing and the fire touched the stick and it was on fire too ! Oooo. . . pretty . As the pictures tell it this smiling baby reached out to touch the pretty which turned out to be hot and apparently fairly painful . I often get miffed at parents who film little junior rolling his trike off a cliff and just as he's going over they drop the camera and run screaming and all we really end up with is a shot of a patch of dandelions with crying in the background . This is what they send to Americas Funniest Videos ? Kudos to mom and dad for sticking with the camera .

Boys like fire don't they? Something mystical and magical and powerful about it that must be innate in boys (and men too) that draws us. Anytime we do a bonfire or camp fire the boys want to toss in sticks , paper and anything else that might be flammable in the fire and stir it around while the girls are standing at the edges swishing away the smoke . We love the smell of it in our clothes after something like that and if we get soot on out faces all the better . Don't get me wrong, girls like fire too but more along the line of candles at dinner and rose petals and  candles in the bedroom . There's a story I'm not allowed to tell of a couple whose bed caught on fire when a cand. . . . and I'm not allowed to tell . 

I found out this summer that fire makes noise , apparently loud enough to wake a whole island of campers and keep 'em up all night . I'm no rugged outdoors-man but often I long for the good old days of the dust covered and weary cowboy laying on his bed roll next to the fire with the metal coffee pot hanging over it on a stick . The sound of a harmonica softly breaks the silence as he gazes up at a sky so full of stars it's almost too bright , and he wonders to himself how in the world his horse learned to play the harmonica . He lays back , his head on a rock and with the brim of his 10 gallon hat pulled down over his forehead he begins to dream of bacon and eggs cooking over that same fire in a cast iron skillet . Zzzz . . . .

Not that I've ever camped like this . It's just how I imagine real camping . I do like to sleep under the stars tho and I usually bring a hammock to string between 2 trees . Not a bed roll but close enough and I laid there this summer staring up at a star filled Maine sky and gave thanks to God for so much and He spoke to me , I'm almost certain of this . He said something along the line of "Mark, you shoulda brought bug spray". Most people imagine the silence of the woods as being refreshing and a thing of wonder but I can tell you from experience that it only enhances the sounds of the thousand mosquitoes feasting on the succulent skin of the dude dumb enough to sleep in the woods . A fella dumb enough to sleep (ha) in a string hammock so they could get at both sides . So I got up and started a camp fire and sat around it for 6 hours feeling only slightly more miserable that the campers in tents wondering what idiot is up at 2 in the morning making fire . They're just lucky I left my horses harmonica in the bag with the bug spray .

As much as I love fire there's one I can't seem to get going . Or if I do it's like burning wet wood , mostly smoke with a small flame and little heat . A Boy Scout of the heart I'm not . I was getting ready to say I long for there to be a fire for God and a fire for life but the truth is I long for not much . I guess mediocrity will do that to you . I don't know where it started but I'd like it to end and for my life to burst into a red hot flame of passion for the important . There is an old song that says "It only takes a spark to get a fire going . . ." but I'm not sure that's true for me . Didn't Paul say to Timothy to fan into flame the gift of God ? How's that work ? I just don't know . I just don't know .

So I end this bit of so called writing in need of advice .Where would you go or what would you do ? How do you handle the dull gray days of life that seem to go on without the heat and light of the love of God ? Anybody? Anybody? Stumbling indeed . . . .