This Fire

Last week we gathered for a heated and healing session attending to the fire within us. Today as people around the US who have felt despair as their representatives ignored their pleas for peace prepare to vote in a primary election, we remember that our nature is not just choice, but transformation.

In our workshop we drew on the “Archive of Fire” in my book M Archive: After the End of the World especially the deep teachings of candle calisthenics, inspired by my beloved mentor M. Jacqui Alexander’s “Anatomy of a Mobilization” in her book Pedagogies of Crossing. We looked closely at the fire within us, what air sustains it, what purpose do we burn for, what messages can we hear when we attune ourselves to our light?

Every message was a message of substantive change. Below is our group poem. May it nourish the fire within you.

This Fire

By the participants in “The Character of Fire”: Writing After the End of the World

“The feel of fire is strong, not hot.”

-M. Jacqui Alexander in Pedagogies of Crossing

This fire is complete.

This fire is gold thread in every cell

This fire is sacred

This fire is liberating

This fire is organizing.

This fire is informative.

This fire is hot

This fire is young

This fire is everything

This fire is needed

This fire is nourishment

This fire is churning

This fire is beauty.

This fire is nascent.

This fire is Underground

This fire is all

This fire is earthquake

This fire is a begining

This fire is tender

This fire is going to keep burning

This fire is guidance

This fire is teacher

This fire is hungry.

This fire is next time

This fire is clearing

This fire is me

This fire is memory

This fire is changing

This fire is justified

This fire is healing

This fire is for us

This fire is renewal

This fire is beyond time…it is difficult to distinguish and impossible to extinguish

This fire is spring

This fire is starlight

This fire is thunder

This fire is joy

This fire is silly

This fire is an honor

This fire is forever

This fire is sprouting

This fire is growing

This fire is here

This fire is flow

This fire is intuitive

This fire is ancestral love

This fire is communing with ancestors and descendants

This fire is painful

This fire is beloved

This fire is the sun

This fire is enough

This fire is liquid

This fire is maddening.

This fire is intense

This fire is silence

This fire is blue

This fire is wet.

This fire is a portal

This fire is purple

This fire is surface and depth

This fire is golden

This fire is beloved

This fire is deep black

This fire is healing

This fire is us

This fire is a companion

This fire is steadfast

This fire is translucid

This fire is ancient

This fire is flower

This fire is green

This fire is now

This fire is a cat

This fire is crying.

This fire is flow

This fire is irridescent

This fire is cackling

This fire is waiting

This fire is laughing

This fire is obsidian

This fire is patient

This fire is also ocean.

If you want to support our work, engage the workshop through the replay and do the writing exercises we did at your own pace you can find the recording here: https://sangodare.podia.com/the-character-of-fire-writing-after-the-end-of-the-world