It Is All Fire

In August of 1991, Jan and I had moved to Shorewood, a suburban town just north of Milwaukee as I took up my first position as a Unitarian Universalist minister, serving the northern suburban, actually almost exurban congregation in Mequon. In addition to our first time living outside of California we’d also moved my mother and auntie in with us at the same time.

So, in addition to enormous excitement, after all I had just begun what I’d been preparing for for years, also Jan was just beginning her MLS program, we felt pretty fragile.

Then a month later we saw on the news how a terrible fire raged through the Oakland hills. It was a shocking event. While this was the most affluent part of the East Bay, still we knew some people there, and it wasn’t very far at all from where we had been living for the past three years.

Before it subsided twenty-five people died and flames would consume nearly four thousand homes and apartment buildings. Something that seemed impossible to my mind at the time.

And for me the fire made our lovely new home ever stranger, ever more fragile…

We did know, I did know, it could, in a moment disappear in smoke…

As we hear in the Upajjhatthana Sutta…

I am of the nature to grow old.
There is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature to have ill health.
There is no way to escape having ill health.

I am of the nature to die.
There is no way to escape death.

all that id dear to me and everyone I love
are of the nature of change.
There is no way to escape being separated from them.

My deeds are my closest companions.
I am the beneficiary of my deeds.
My deeds are the ground on which I stand.