Becoming Fire

The movement started when Christianity could be legally practiced in the Roman Empire. Those in serious pursuit of a way of life that could be called “Christian” left their towns and cities and headed to remote places to live alone or in small groups. The most notable were the ones who lived in the Sinai Desert.

Stories about these desert dwellers have been handed down over the past two millennia. Great wisdom about the spiritual life can be found in their stories and sayings. The stories themselves are often more metaphoric than literal.

Among my favorite stories is one told about Abba Joseph. (These desert dwellers were given the title of father or mother, abba or imma, because they served as spiritual parents to others.)

A young monk visited Abba Joseph and said to him, “Father, as best as I can, I say my prayers, I fast, I meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” The old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “You must become fire itself.”

The story of Abba Joseph sounds very odd to us. I suspect that it sounded pretty odd to the original hearers of the story as well. Yet, I believe it’s a wonderful metaphor about spirituality and the role of the spiritual dimension of our lives.

Spirituality is often associated with peace, harmony, and personal fulfillment. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to live at peace with others, in harmony with the world around us, and to experience fulfillment in life. The young man in the story maintains spiritual practices to do these very things. But Abba Joseph radically calls him to something more: the transformation of self.

The image of transformation found in the story would make sense to the early Christians of the third century whose primary scripture was the Hebrew Testament. The Holy One was fire. The Creator of the cosmos has appeared as a burning bush, a pillar of fire, and in similar fiery cacophonous events. Abba Joseph was saying that our spiritual transformation is meant to lead our lives more fully into the life of the Divine.

The concept of humans becoming Divine is challenging for us to consider today. We’ve been taught to think in categories. For example, it’s either day or night, light or dark, human or divine. It can’t be both at the same time. This way of thinking is known as dualism. This dualistic way of thinking only developed in Europe in the second millennium of Christian history. Before that, things we now view as opposite had the potential to exist together simultaneously. In other words, being both human and divine were not mutually exclusive categories.

It was from this non-dualistic, holistic view that the desert dwellers wrote about the spiritual dimension of life being one of divinization or deification: the process of humans becoming divine. The concept is very much like a Buddhist understanding of enlightenment. It’s a process of transformation from the life that we live as human beings to a life we share fully as part of divinity. Yes, we may do the same things. But we have fundamentally changed.

Abba Joseph became fire. He still ate, drank, slept, and lived his life. But that life was transformed in ways that those of us who aren’t similarly transformed can understand. The story is meant to instruct that there’s something more to spiritual practice than good feelings and positive emotion. Spiritual practice is meant to lead to a fundamental transformation of our very being.