The fire did not die

Lots of people have asked me what the meaning of the flame tattoo on my forearm is. Received mostly clandestinely in April of 2022, it was always meant to be an intimately personal, mysterious symbol, something that would leave people wondering. I intentionally laid bare my most vulnerable, innermost self on the most visible part of my body, reveling in the tension of that juxtaposition. But due to that last fact, it was pretty naïve of me to think that people would not ask what it meant, and even more naïve to forget that I’m not the type of person to give a half-hearted, sugar-coated answer. I’ve been tempted to simply say, “I’m an Aries. Our element is fire. It’s cool.” Because that’s part of the truth, but it’s not even close to the whole truth. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. But I don’t do partial truths. If you ask me what my tattoo means, I will not give you the short story, even if that’s what you wanted. I’m gonna give you the iceberg, and I’m gonna light that iceberg on fire.

The flame has a three-fold meaning, and naturally, all the points are interrelated:

1. I am an Aries— the first sign, the “child” of the Zodiac, the sign of the Spring equinox, of birth, of newness, of setting things into motion. I got this flame tattoo not coincidentally during Aries season. Aries, the Greek God of War who brings destruction on the former things and urges in something better in its place. Its animal is the Ram— stubborn, leads full force with the head. Its elemental sign is fire (as opposed to earth, air, or water). Fire signs are driven by passion, desire, anger, intensity, energy, impulsivity. And those things move them into action. Think of what fire can do. Fire keeps people warm, it cooks food and cleanses things. But it is also dangerous. It can burn houses, entire cities, down to dust if it gets out of control. Aries are natural born leaders who stand out from the pack in their determinacy for independence and forging their own path. Like fire, this can be both destructive and powerfully transformative.  

2. I have always been a fiery person. And it’s taken me a long time to accept this. I feel everything to the extreme—when I’m angry, I’m really angry; when I’m sad, I’m really sad; when I’m happy, I’m really happy. I’m quick to get fired up about something, and it takes me a while to cool down. When I feel lots of emotions, the core of my body literally feels hot, like fire in my belly, I feel it building up and churning, propelling me into motion. I’ve been told I’m dramatic, sensitive, overreacting, or “a lot,” but the way I experience it, I care so much about certain things that I find it difficult, and often wrong to let them slide past unaddressed. I’ve never been good at making long-term or even short-term goals for my life, but I’ve always, always been sure of the things that I am passionate about and I’ve always gone and done those things— the things that light a fire inside me, that make me come alive. Things like singing, writing, social justice and human rights, theology and spirituality, my family and friends. These things have always kept my feet on the ground and my eye on the bigger picture. In the words of Rob Bell, these things remind me how to be here.

But something happened to me after I graduated seminary in May of 2021. I slipped into a season of depression, the first I had ever experienced. I wrote about this in a previous blog, so I will not go into too much detail here. My flame was dwindling. And nothing was rekindling it. I couldn’t find the desire or the energy to spend time on those things that I’m passionate about, the things that bring me life. During this time, I was making my way through the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and she also goes through a period of something like depression, although it’s never explicitly labeled as such. In a campy yet poignant musical episode, she sings a song where she says, “I touch the fire and it freezes me. I look into it, and it’s black. Why can’t I feel? My skin should crack and peel. I want the fire back.” That is what I was experiencing. Once someone who felt every emotion so fervently, now I felt nothing. Once someone who cared so ardently, now it was a struggle to be moved. I wanted the fire back. I wanted to feel pain. I wanted to feel joy. I wanted to be consumed by the flames and let them transform me. But what I couldn’t see clearly at the time was that the fire may have dwindled, but it did not die. Without the fire there would be nothingness. And I did not slip into nothingness. I was just absent for a little while. I was missing, but I was not lost. Where did I go? I was lying in wait. Waiting for fuel for the fire.

That fuel was a communal music making experience in December of that year that jolted my system into remembering what it felt like to feel. To care, to think, to act, to work, to commune with the human beings in front of me. Eight months of buried emotions ripped through me like a wildfire and I laid bare everything I had with my voice. In the musical words of Buffy once more, “don’t give me songs, give me something to sing about.” Metaphorical songs were being thrown at me, flying through me, devoid of depth and meaning. But I desperately needed something to sing about.

Sometimes in my life my flame might dim. It might dwindle to near nothingness. Life is a series of ebbs and flows, and I won’t always feel fiery. But the flame on my wrist is a constant reminder of who I am. It’s a reminder that I can always rekindle the flame with the things that I love most dearly in the world.

3. I got this tattoo right around Easter. Images and symbols of death and resurrection, rebirth, and baptism were flying around my head. But most of all I kept envisioning the Holy Spirit wrapped in flames and whipping her flames around me, beckoning me to walk alongside her, to fight for my life and join the throng of the living in their joys and sorrows again. I had been taunted by oblivion, danced with senselessness. But the Holy Spirit made me a promiscuous offer of life I couldn’t refuse. I realized that what I was undergoing during my year of depression was a second baptism. This time not with water, but with fire. This was the one I didn’t choose. This was the one I really didn’t want. That first time I got dunked in the ocean water, but I didn’t know what it meant to then step out into the sun and risk getting burned. I was hopeful, bright-eyed, but I didn’t know how to hope in the darkness. This time I was born again out of the pain of my trials, ripped from the murky, cobwebbed tomb that was my mind and thrust into a more painful, yet cleansing fire. This was the pain of transformation. The pain of accepting my responsibility over my life and choosing to move forward. I emerged aching, scarred, and scared for what came next. But my cold, stony heart burned red inside my chest again, and that meant that I had the will to move forward, one tiny, painstaking step at a time, for myself, for those that I love, and for the betterment of the world. My feet on the ground and my eyes on the bigger picture again.

I think all of us who believe in that sort of stuff undergo a second baptism of sorts, each of us at varying points in our lives. Where what we thought our life was going to be like is turned upside down and we have to make a choice to resist or transform. Hell, some of us get re-baptized three or four or five times in our lives. I don’t think we choose to go under the water, but we do choose to come up again and start anew. Perhaps we might like to stay under the water to avoid the burning sun. But there is no life under the water for us. If we step out into the sun there is pain, but there is also joy and love and fulfillment. There is the beauty of the journey of ever becoming. Of joining the chorus of living creatures in their evolution, together making this earth what it’s meant to be.

Shortly after I got my tattoo I felt inspired to write this brief poem:

For once I was baptized with water

Now I am baptized in the fire of the Holy Spirit

Whose dangerous glory I saw

but did not let consume me

I walked into the fire because I had nowhere left to turn

I bathed in her flames

Perfectly still as I lie in wait

And there finally found new life,

bursting forth, trembling as I swept up the flames that became my own