Feed Yourself To The Flame

“So, finally, I come to that which I would say first, and in the middle, and the last, for all the way through it is of fundamental importance. No man shall know this life except as he feeds into the flame of his highest vision everything that he has. We are like a candle which can have light and give light only as it feeds into the flame its very self. The light burns on but the candle gets smaller and smaller. 

By the light within us we see something to do which we know will cost us our job, and upon that job wife and child are dependent. And we are afraid, and we refuse to do it; only to discover that every day we delay, the flame in us burns lower. At last, afraid that if we are not obedient the flame will go out, we take this deed from which we shrink and, as it were, lay it in the flame. Then the flame burns a bit more brightly, and by its rays we see something further to do, and this time it will cost us not only our job but the friendship of the person whom we love more than anyone else on this earth. And before the prospect of it our whole being seems to shrivel up, in fear and anguish. We say we cannot, we will not, do it. We absolutely refuse. And like Jonah we flee to the very ends of the earth, in a hope to escape…only to realize at last that, go where we may, we but carry with us every minute the secret sense that our light is burning lower, and lower, and lower. Until, at last, desperate, lest our light go out altogether, and in an utter agony of dedication, we gather this thing also in our hands and lay it in the flame. And so it goes on, year after year. In the end, if our flame is to be kept burning, we shall have to feed into it everything that we have. And it often seems that it cannot reach its most ineffable beauty or attain its most strangely piercing power until it has fed on our very blood. 

But let us not profane the thing with any whining about ‘sacrifice.’ No one ever yet gave up anything for the sake of the highest truth and beauty that were in him without getting far more than he gave. He is like a man seeking goodly pearls who, having found one, in his joy went and sold all that he had in order that he might possess himself of that pearl. And I believe that deep deep down every one of us is secretly hoping and seeking for that which is great enough, true enough, beautiful enough, to give it everything that he has. Deep down it is not suffering we fear. We do not even fear death. What we really fear most is that we may go through life and never find that to which me may give our all. Really everyone of us longs to erect an alter in his heart, and on it to lay down his very own self. Except we die we shall not live. And ah, how we want to live! How we want really to live!”

–excerpted from William Gayley Simpson’s Toward the Rising Sun