··· Tags pointing to: fire ···

Why Is Fire Hot?

One winter evening, when the innovative engineer R. Buckminster Fuller was drinking tea by the fireplace of Prof. Hugh Kenner, three-year-old Lisa Kenner prolonged her bedtime farewell with the question: “Bucky, why is the fire hot?” Kenner writes: Some instinct told Lisa he was the man to ask. His answer, as he took her on his lap, began, like most of his answers, some distance away from the question. “You remember, darling, when the tree was growing in the sunlight?” On arms like upgroping branches, his hands became clusters of leaves as he described their collecting the sunlight, processing its energies into sugars, drawing them down into a stocky trunk. “Then the men cut it down. and and sawed it into logs. And what you see now”—he pointed to the crackling hearth—“is the sunlight, unwinding from the log.”

— Author unknown, reference is to New York Times Magazine via Readers’ Digest  <link>

The flame of love
grows as it is divided
it increases by being shared
from one, then two, then three
and darkness is transformed into glory
and the walls reflect its light
Share your flame!
Share your flame!

— St. John of the Cross  <link>

Love is that flame that once kindled burns everything, and only the mystery and the journey remain.

— Rumi  <link>

Persistent Longing

Your persistent longing is your persistent voice. But when love grows cold, the heart grows silent. Burning love is the outcry of the heart! If you are filled with longing all the time, you will keep crying out, and if your love perseveres, your cry will be heard without fail.

— St. Augustine  <link>

Thinking gives off smoke to prove the existence of fire
There are wonderful shapes in rising smoke
    that imagination loves to watch
But it’s a mistake to leave the fire for that filmy sight
Stay here at the flame’s core

— Rumi  <link>