Fire has long been used in religious rituals; in this illustration, the flashlight depicts the sacred fire. From the infinite earth, materials are gathered; the Many finite, temporal, profane things return to the One infinite, eternal, divine fire. Smoke is the traditional conveyor of prayers; in this illustration, the light beam arises, becoming, with its human holder, the channel of peace that St. Francis sought, between the wheel of the earth and the wheel in the sky (when it’s calm, smokewheels in the sky may be seen topping the columns arising from chimneys).

As with the fuel, fire, and smoke, so too with us.

In baptism by fire, the initiate is required to quit all claim to the former self; suffering is exactly the attempt to cling to the previous form; bliss is burning for all we’re worth, simply hoping that others might be enlightened, not harmed, by our immolation (“This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine!”). In this spirit, Christ walked willingly to Calvary.

In this spirit, some Buddhists undergo willingly baptism by fire.

Metabolism is the process of burning fuel; each and every one of us is burning alive. And the same heat, the same light, the same divine fire burns within us All: We consume the fruit of the earth, arise in its burning, and return from whence we came, our (only apparent) death and disintegration continuing the cycle by returning us into fuel for the divine fire; whence we arise, thence we return; so, everywhere I look, I know:

There by the grace of God go I.

In this light, every bit as bright as the light of a burning Buddhist, life is not about quantity; life’s goal is not to hog all the fuel, nor to build a bigger fire, nor to petrify dancing plasma. In this light, life is about compassionate concern for the quality of all life, for no other reason than this:

Where we burn one, we burn All.