What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water.
So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.
When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on logs,
then we come to see how
it is fuel, and the absence of fuel
together, that make fire possible.
We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.
San M. Intrator and Megan Scribner, Editors, Teaching with Fire: Poetry that Sustains the Courage to Teach. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003, p,89. Today my Spiritual Director read me this poem in response to my sharing how I am, for the first time in my life, operating with space—with margin—in my schedule. I now have time not only to accept a last-minute call for a coaching meeting—as happened yesterday, but also space to Be, reflect, and do some of the creative work that each of us crave to do, but often gets squeezed out by the sheer quantity of the stuff we try to do or the number of people we feel we have to see. I am still wrestling with the issue of stewardship—What is enough? What is effective stewardship of my life as a faith-supported missionary?, and those issues and questions we all face from time to time. But I am finding, maybe for the first time in my life, that the issue is not sharing all the wonderful content and ideas which I have collected and gleaned over a lifetime, but finding that proper balance between fuel and space. I have never thought of the juxtaposition of those two items, but am finding great joy in coaching fewer, and going deeper, and finding that going deeper and burning hotter probably has not happened and will not happen without the necessary space between the logs. Isn’t that a great metaphor, and one we all know to be true from our own fire-building experiences? And the meaning is even deeper in the context of spiritual friendships and formation. This may be the image that helps me relinquish my fist-tight hold on content—the ideas, the paradigms, the principles that I for too long have thought were more important than they are. I invite you, if and when you ever catch me loading up the fire with way too many logs, to just remind me—“Steve, you only need to lay a log lightly from time to time…” I am finding that coaching surely operates on this kind of fire, as does mentoring, and the stewarding of relationships in the Body of Christ. I just wish I had accepted that truth 30 years ago when I began teaching. Warming myself by the fire… Today’s guest blogger is Steve Hoke, a former VP of People Development with Church Resource Ministries who now focuses on leader development and strategic life coaching with mission leaders around the world. He lives with his wife in Ft. Collins, Colorado. He is the co-author with Bill Taylor of Global Mission Handbook: Your Guide to Crosscultural Service (IVPress, 2009). Steve can be contacted at steve.hoke@crmleaders.org.
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