Back in June, Larry Messerman announced that he would be stepping down from his role as a Co—Executive of the Sacred Fire Community. The baton just passed to newly recruited Tim Simon. Welcome Tim! At this juncture, we have, as a community, the occasion and honor to celebrate  Larry for his eight years of devoted and inspired service. Larry listened carefully around the fire, and worked  tirelessly and collaboratively with the three other co-executives  to help bring more Fire and heart into the world.  Now we can share and show some of this heart and Fire  to him. What better way to honor Larry for his legacy of leadership than to express  gratitude, appreciation and thankfulness—true markers of a  strong, heart-based community.

We invite you to sign Larry’s card by sending us an email with your appreciation, jokes or funny memories. Please feel free to include a note, share an anecdote, a poem, a photo. Let your heart open wide and be a part of this fiery forum.  In another issue of HotNews we’ll share everyone’s responses. Thank you!

By Jonathan Merritt

We were sitting in a beautiful dell at the base of a mountain close to the sea. It was a small group, about thirty-five people, some of whom had come from hundreds, even thousands of miles away to sit in the presence of Grandfather Fire. Before the Tsaurirrikame, David Wiley, a fully initiated shamanic healer and ceremonial leader in the lineage of the Wixarika (Huichols) of Mexico’s Western Sierra Madre, approached the brightly burning fire to make his offerings and prayers, a statement was read that described how, in times of great turbulence and trouble, when the people have lost their essential connection with Divine Presence, the gods arrange to speak with us in a voice we can understand, to bring guidance so that we might regain balance and remember our dependence on and obligation to all that lives, so that we might transform our culture, so that we might live joyfully again in relationship with each other and the living world. This phenomenon, which is common in many traditional cultures, is very unusual in ours and signifies the dangerous precipice upon which we teeter. The statement described the Tsaurirrikame, his dedication, learning and sacrifice, how at a certain point he would go into a coma-like state and a very different distinct presence would rise in him and speak through his body. That presence, that voice, is known in Huichol as Tatewarí, Grandfather Fire, the Elemental God of Fire.

I have had the good fortune to sit in this way with Grandfather Fire more than a hundred times. Yet, each time, as the energy builds to where the Tsaurirrikame begins shaking and Tatewarí emerges, I feel my own excitement and trepidation—excitement because I know that we are about to be given Divine Wisdom; trepidation because I remember the fundamental situation, that we are living in an extremely dangerous time, and that what we need to hear may be both personally and culturally painful.