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Mission Critical: Return Fire to the People

How big a flame will it take? Sacred Fire, now in its twentieth year, is burning away the isolation of modern life with the connective and transformative gift of Fire.

What does that look like? How is that possible? Where does one start? While the task may seem daunting, we hope the following stories—offered by those familiar with the work of Sacred Fire—will inspire you and let you see why we feel our mission is worth staying the course for.

Having felt the powerful effect of Fire in our own lives, we naturally want to spread that opportunity to many, many others.

Daunting? Perhaps. Yet deep inside each of us at Sacred Fire, we believe that a small flame, carefully tended, can burst into something big and bright, revealing what has been forgotten, burning away what no longer serves, warming hearts and spirits, and bringing our human family once more into right relationship with ourselves, with each other and with all Life. Will you join us? We invite you to live into your own story of discovery and renewal!

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He’s So Hot!

He appears in many countries worldwide and across the USA, touring from city to city. His wise words regularly inspire people to travel across oceans or drive for 10 or more hours just to listen. Who is this mysterious force of Nature?

After being in the presence of a living, conversing divine being whose words and presence have touched and changed us, how do we share the experience with others? Many of us who have attended Fire Speaks have the same reaction: the world needs to hear more from Grandfather Fire! And yet, how do we go about inviting our friends to this mysterious event that has the potential not only to blow their minds, but also to open their hearts to the possibility that the world around us actually is living, breathing, sacred and filled with vision and meaning?

Perhaps the best way to invite friends or loved ones to this extraordinary event is to share our stories of how we have been moved by being in Grandfather’s presence. And here are some stories we’ve collected from people who were deeply moved by their encounter with Grandfather Fire at Fire Speaks.

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The Doorway to Adulthood: Sacred Initiation in Our Twenty-first Century World

by the Sacred Fire editorial team

In our modern cultures that seem to worship eternal youth—that state of being that gives us permission to be in constant pursuit of our individual pleasure and enjoyment—what will it take to help us grow up?

In today’s world, becoming an adult might seem to be about hitting a well-recognized milestone like receiving a driver’s license, voting for the first time, or reaching legal age for drinking alcohol. For others, the moment of stepping into the workforce, becoming a parent, or making a major investment in home or career might seem the significant step. However, for traditional cultures (and that includes most of the villages of our great-great- or great-great-great-grandparents), becoming an adult was a sacred matter. Initiation into adulthood was a universal human practice, common to most societies, and it is still practiced by intact traditional cultures to this day.

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Medicine for our Time

The Center for Disease Control just released a report noting that life expectancy for Americans actually declined 0.1 percent in 2017 compared to 2016, which translates to 70,000 more deaths. This was chiefly due to an increase in suicides and a dramatic increase in deaths due to synthetic opioid overdoses. This statistic is another sign that loneliness and alienation are taking a toll on our societal and individual wellbeing.

Gathering around Fire is the original form of ‘social networking.’ In this setting, we can get in touch with our essential human nature, and begin to experience the joy and sense of meaning that have sustained people for thousands of years. We can work things out, face-to-face, regarding issues that affect us close to home, in our own neighborhoods and cities.
Sacred Fire invites you to join us around the hearth to experience the warmth of relationships built and strengthened over time. Our monthly community fires are happening in 7 countries on 4 continents, and our mission is to grow this number exponentially. Sacred Fire: it is the medicine for our time. We hope you will join us!

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Women and Men in a World of Growing Conflict

by Sherry Boatright, Sacred Fire Carrollton, Georgia (USA)

Over the last two years, I’ve been glued to online news media. It has become altogether a questionable habit as I find myself moving from one unsettling story to the next. I’m working to get a grip. The upside, though, is that I’ve also discovered great writers and compelling studies about what’s going on in the world, from climate change to local and global politics, from women’s and men’s issues to health and family life.

Take kids for instance. Years ago, Carol Gilligan showed that girls up until age 9 or 10 are confident and expressive of their feelings. But as they move into adolescence, they begin to hide their feelings for fear of not fitting in.

Now my newsfeed tells me that boys are also born with a great talent for emotional openness, but that in adolescence they begin developing their manhood and differentiate themselves from girls.

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The Gift of Grief: Honoring Loss, Opening to Peace

by Prema Sheerin, Sacred Fire Asheville, North Carolina

A well-tended garden has a balance of the essential elements: fire, earth, water, air and growth. In this, the fourth in a series of five articles, traditional healer Prema Sheerin continues to reveal the vital energies and gifts of each of the ‘elemental emotions’ that, similarly, are meant to provide for a healthy ecosystem in every human being. These elemental emotions are happiness, fear, anger, sympathy and grief. This article addresses grief, which is traditionally associated with the season of autumn.

As we enter the season of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, we feel the poignancy of the fading light, the waning warmth and brilliance of summer. It is a good time to explore the emotion of grief, the energy that supports us in letting go and navigating the many losses and transitions of life. Like the rain that comes to cool the heat of summer, grief provides the nourishing moisture that allows us to process and heal the losses we inevitably encounter.

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Young Adult Initiation: An Alchemical Process

Successful initiation into adulthood involves more than getting a driver’s license, reaching legal drinking age or completing school.

In humans, successful initiation into adulthood requires physical, mental, emotional and spiritual ingredients, and depends on more than a symbolic coming-of-age ceremony. Humans are born with a latent energy that stays dormant until certain conditions are met. There needs to be a particular readiness and then thoughtful preparation, up to a year or longer. Older adults and elders who understand the important movement from dependence to independence support the initiation process. The process is kind of like baking a cake: various ingredients are brought together in specific proportion, are then subjected to heat over a period of time and, if done correctly, are transformed into something new. Then with independence come responsibility, sacrifice, and the understanding that there are consequences to one’s actions. Initiation also provides a special gift: a greater understanding of life purpose, path and destiny. Deanna Jenne, ritual leader for Sacred Fire’s Sacred Emergence initiation for young women, speaks of “shining the diamond”, a term from Chinese medicine. “We help the young woman really know who she is.” David Wiley, ritual leader for young men’s initiation, adds that in an uncertain world, as autonomy sets in, mistakes will be made, yet making mistakes is a natural human phenomenon. “The key is learning from those mistakes, and how to move with them successfully.”For more information about Young Men’s Initiation
For more information about Young Women’s Initiation

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Grief and the Courage to Let Go

by Prema Sheerin, Sacred Fire Asheville, NC, USA

In this fourth article in a series of five, traditional healer and Sacred Fire Community Lifeways provider Prema Sheerin continues her exploration of the five “elemental” emotions that are a natural part of the human experience.

Like the rain that comes to cool the heat of summer, grief (which is associated with the season of autumn) provides nourishing moisture that allows us to process and heal the losses we will inevitably encounter. In our modern western culture we have become obsessed with happiness and we have shunned the emotion of grief, believing that it is ‘negative’ and ‘depressing’. We apologize for our tears and sadness, thinking that we are ‘bringing everyone down’. A vast polarity has been created between sadness and happiness and we see happiness as being the desired outcome, a place to arrive and stay. We have forgotten that happiness, like all elemental emotions, will arise and then subside to make way for the next feeling that will swell in response to the circumstances of our lives.

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Sparks: Coming Soon

Around the Fire

Around the Fire is the newsletter of Sacred Fire and is published monthly.

If you’re new to Sacred Fire, here are three ways to learn more:

  1. Find a local Fire and experience it first hand.
  2. Visit our web site.
  3. Subscribe to Around the Fire and discover more about our deep community.
  4. Follow us on social media (see footer of page)

Around the Fire is published by the Sacred Fire Outreach team:

Director
Sharon Brown

Strategic Direction
Karen Fernandez
Lawrence Messerman
Sharon Brown

Editorial Team
Erin Everett
Christine Staub
Linda Azar

Web Publishing
Sally Casper
Britt Espinosa

Graphic Design
Leticia Gamboa
Sylvia Law

Social Media
Erin Everett
Abigail Murray-Nikkel

Database Administrator
Linda Felch

Event Support
Heidi Griswold

Web Design and Development
Malowany Creative
Living Magic LLP

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