Where’s our modern-day fire?

Have we buried it? | 100 Days of Wonder #3

Have we buried our fire?

Where’s our modern-day fire?

You know, that uniting, soul-bonding, heart-warming hub we circled around in ancient times? That bright godly energy that forge-welded our minds and hearts as we enjoyed its glow?

Have we replaced it with something else, or is it just like, gone… without a good stand-in?

Do we still have an ember burning inside of us?

A short while ago, I was at the biggest Dutch dolmen—an ancient burial mound, sometimes called a megalithic tomb (or “hunebed” in Dutch). There’s a visitor center a stone's throw away, where we got a tour. During the tour, the guide talked about how, in the stone age, we made fire using pyrite, fire stones, and amadou, or “tinder fungus.” (Otzi the iceman carried it in a pouch, some say it smoldered for all of those 5000 years he was underneath the ice… 😉)

We used fire for everything, from warming ourselves to cooking food. But it wasn’t only these more “functional” uses that were important. We also used it for rituals that united everyone in the tribe.

In those ancient times, we constantly kept a fire burning. If it wasn’t burning in a pit, there was always a piece of amadou with an ember within that could be lit up.

I’d like to imagine the constant flame in the pit mirrored the fire that burned bright in our hearts. Fire, as the representation of the divine we saw in the sun, giving us life. Fire, as the great connector, to others in our tribe, to ourselves, and to the imaginal, driving us to pursue beauty, kindness, and greatness.

In the millennia since then, our technology has evolved. So much so that in the last few hundred years, we, less and less, need a fire burning in our houses. But have we buried the fire together with the hunebeds of old? Has the quenching of the fire in our homes’ hearths also smothered our inner fire as well? Or do we still have a tiny ember burning slowly somewhere?

Don’t be so melodramatic Jibran…

I am being somewhat melodramatic in saying we lost the fire (I just couldn’t help myself talking about burial mounds and all that). But I don’t think it’s completely untrue.

It’s not like we’ve all lost the fire within—I know many individuals with a burning passion inside of them—but I am speaking on the level of our society. I feel there’s a powerful force and vision we’re not tapping that could unite more of us, that could ignite more within us!

Though it could very well be that I’m mistaken in assuming there ever was a societal-level (or tribe-level) unified vision. Maybe it has always been solely the fire within individuals that burned so bright that it just seemed to be a societal thing. Who knows?

In any case, I think it’s interesting to figure out if there’s a more unifying vision, a fire like that in ancient times, for us to brighten our future.

What do you think our current fire is (or could be)?

Thanks for reading!

Regards,

Jibran

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PS. For those curious about what a hunebed is, here’s the largest in the Netherlands.

And here from above. It’s 74 feet long, 14 feet wide, and ~12 feet high!