Ashes, Dust, and Candle Wax

Last week at youth group a wonderful young priest came and spent time with us to teach us about Taize and prayer in the style of Taize.  After a shared meal and a lot of talking, we went into the sanctuary.  She pulled out an entire bag of tea lights, and I was immediately delighted.  Not only are candles important to me, but just a few weeks earlier my wife and I had led a session on prayer where we had talked about how just the simple act of lighting a candle can itself be a prayer.  It was a happy harmony of lessons on prayer for our students.  It's tough to know, just seeing them once a week, how much they are internalizing what we expose them to, but I'm pleased to think the Holy Spirit is at work even in our sometimes haphazard plans.

Anyway, because of that night I ended up sending the link to my Advent Triptych to that priest, as well as the woman who runs our youth group.  One of the quotes that I had in mind as I was writing that sermon is from a notecard my dad keeps on his bedroom door.  He has it as a Jack London quote; an internet search will question the validity of the reference.  In any case, this is what it says:

"I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out
    in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom
    of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time."

I've long assumed that I would also rather be ashes than dust.  I'd like to think I've lived most of my life burning brightly; I've certainly burnt out a number of times.  Only God has kept me from many more! 

The frenzied and frenetic fiery pace I kept in high school, college, and even seminary (to a lesser extent) probably came straight from my 8th grade teacher's echo of this credo: "Suck the marrow out of life!"  I think his quote may have been the first time I heard someone say something that gave me language for what I was already thinking: "Suck the marrow out of life."  He described the way a dog will not just eat the meat off a bone but crack it and break it and suck all the marrow out of it, all the nutrients, consume it completely.  I still remember him telling us that when our head hit the pillow it should be with a sense of accomplishment, with the knowledge that we had done all we could for the day, maybe with a tinge of exhaustion.  The craziest week of my life I averaged between 3 and 4 hours of sleep over 8 days; I had mono a few months later, and slept for 17 hours a day.  Ashes, never dust.

With my senior sermon in mind, I've been re-examining my feelings about this quote.  I've had a very difficult time with one of my co-teachers at school.  I think things are working themselves slowly out.  I don't think I'll ever be friends with this teacher, but at least we are attempting a new pattern of working together with our kids interest in mind, which is not what was happening for the better part of the year, in ways I won't bother to describe.

One thing has recently happened thought that made me just furious.  When I heard about it, I immediately came to a decision (as a good EC teacher) that I would simply start to document everything I did, so that I can prove myself to be beyond reproach.  I didn't opt for confrontation (I never do).  I didn't let it go.  I chose a "middle way."  I didn't choose to confront my co-teacher in anger like a flash-in-a-pan.  I didn't choose to ignore the issue.

I didn't choose ashes.  I didn't choose dust either.

Now I'm not saying I'm above reproach in any way in this situation.  I'm also not even saying that the decision(s) I'm making concerning this situation are all correct.  But what I have reflected on is that rather than ashes or dust, I'm choosing to be just what my senior sermon gave me language to do: candle wax.  I choose the slow burn.  I choose to glow.  I choose to be moved with the wind but not extinguished by it.  I choose to act, but only as much as I can do at one time rather than trying to do everything all at once.  The model I preached about has become for me a via media.

I won't exactly say that this is the Holy Spirit's work, redeeming my sinful tendency to blow up or to hide.  I'm not convinced enough that "holy" really describes anything about my situation.  I don't really even have any answers right now.  But I'm praying and learning and reflecting.  Perhaps above all I'm hoping, hoping that a slow burn will flicker brightly, and not be overcome by the darkness.