The Other Kind of Fire: Soul of the Wounded Healer
Fire calls us forth to intermingle, laugh, love, and enjoy, yet so many are feeling lonely, exhausted, isolated, and bewildered even as we come out to socialize after the Great Loneliness of these past three years.
Summer is the season of the fire element bringing warmth, connection, intimacy, ripening, expansion, circulation. Fire also purifies, clearing out the what is no longer useful to be recycled into nutrients for soil and new growth. Indigenous peoples teach that there are ways to help the earth by setting contained fires to prevent the build up of understories that have become congested with overgrowth or that have lost their vitality. The nutrients from the ash feeds the earth and creates fertile soil while preventing natural fires from burning out of control.
I can see how this is also a metaphor for our own psycho-spiritual health internally.
As multitudes of fires burn out of control across the body of Gaia each summer, I can feel how she struggles to nourish all her children, even as we continue to harm her. I wonder about how our own bodies are responding as I take off my sandals and step into the salty water. What happens to the earth happens also in our bodies. Continue reading “The Other Kind of Fire: Soul of the Wounded Healer”
