313--Clearfire

One of my coaching clients has a book in which he daily writes things he's grateful for. He shared that this practice re-draws his view of the world and his perspective on faith. "Discouragement cannot live in a heart that's grateful..."

Nor can anger, for that matter. High-desert conversation with General came to a similar conclusion. Gratitude quenches the fire.

About 4 years ago I envisioned my anger as a yellow-orange ball of flame, engulfing, obscuring my vision, motivating actions that neither serve nor protect. I remember a conversation with God where I noticed that as He spoke, the wind of His Spirit seemed to corral the flames and cool them. I watched colors change to red, then violet, then blue, white, and finally clear. Clear, invisible, unmistakably powerful.

The yellow flame had engulfed me entirely, noisy and turbulent. The clear flame, dime-sized, held perfectly still in my stomach, a nuclear reactor on a leash.

A power source unlike anything I experienced before and very much akin to joy, as though anger and joy are related by the turn of a coin-face. It enables some kind of detection mechanism--properly tended, it warns of danger, even self-betrayal.

When I neglect tending the clear flame, it regresses through color changes back to white, back to blue, back to violet, red, growing larger and more diffused with each transition, damaging more of me and those nearby. The clear flame doesn't damage---it actually heals.

I don't offer explanations for what I saw. There was a knowing that came with it. I knew that whereas the former yellow-tongued anger was an external force that came upon me and left at whim, this clear source was a permanent resident, my responsibility to tend, to be accessed by will and not whim, to be used for healing and not destruction.

When I say that the last several weeks I've been dealing with anger, I'm saying that I've been regressing toward rage, destructive emotion born of fear.

Mixed applications of gratitude and humility catalyze the return to loving, calm, clear fire.

Pick A Chapter--Isaiah 54

Goodnight, Beautiful...

Goodnight, Strender