Fire Keepers

Keeping the fire is an important job. It’s one that many of our students love to be entrusted with and one of my favorite skills to instruct here at Zealous. 

Keeping the fire isn’t just coaxing a flame into tinder. To keep a fire you’ve got to invest care ensuring the flame grows strong, without casting dangerous embers or growing out of control!

I think about my job as a Coach here at Zealous, much in the same way I think about tending a fire. I introduce the right fuels at the right time; my students grow. Some take more gentle care, special considerations for their potential to be realized in bright blazes of inspiration. Some are like wildfire, hard to supply with enough fodder for thought. 

With the birth of our first, my role as a fire keeper has taken on a completely new shape and hue. This little one is ours to care for, and ours alone- although his community has come bearing brands of all sorts from every corner of the forests and plains and coasts and mountains where his tribe is settled. My son is my world- every bit of my being concentrated on his small but growing luminescence. 

I have passed my fathers’ lessons on to many others’ children. He taught me a lot of things about how to live in the outdoors. He taught me how to sleep comfortably in a tent in winter, where to look for fish and deer, and how to ignore mosquitoes and thorns while picking way too many raspberries. 

When I was young, my dad taught me how to make a fire. 

He taught me to tend it like a child. 

“Get twice as much tinder as you think you’ll need, then even more” he’d say. “It’ll be hungry,” and we’d talk gently, while we coaxed a flame to life, taking pride in its consumption of progressively sized and well laid out fuels. 

“When it’s little like this, you can’t leave it,” he’d say, and we’d work to make sure we had all it would need at hand. 

“It’s getting to be a big boy now!” 

I still say that, with no lack of pride, every time I grow a flicker into a fire that can provide warmth, or cook food, or hold a community together for as long as its embers dance and stories last.

When I was invited to join Zealous, it was still a young flame- or maybe yet, a well gathered nest of tinder, kindling close at hand. Dry, and organized. 

Zealous took constant care in those days, Kelsey and I referring to it as our baby, often. We’d gather to stoke its attendance and programs and structures til late in the night and on weekends. We poured our energy and breath into it’s becoming. 

As Zealous grew, it provided more light, and more warmth, and more community for those who gathered in its glow. Our humble little micro-school in the mountains flourished, and with no lack of pride, I can say, “It’s getting to be a big boy now!” 

But now I am a real papa, and no amount of love and care put into a fire coaxed forth from an uncertain flame, struggling against rain or mountain wind; no sleepless night spent conjuring success for the lofty goals of a non-profit startup could have prepared me for the wholeness of focus demanded, tender and well laid, for the little life we have been entrusted now. 

I feel my father’s hands, guiding, ghostly; seek the wisdom of my mother, often- still in her keeping, after so many years. 

Michael and his son, Bear.

I glimpse a newly profound understanding of the depth of cinders from which I’ve come. All the breath that has stoked my own blazing, the constant care and preparation that has allowed me to grow into a “big boy,” now.

Dang, it took work to get me to burn well enough to keep going.  

I approach the project of Zealous, my place as a fire-keeper, differently these days. I have a different perspective on all the tending it took to help these youngsters shine so brightly. 

You gathered more than you thought you would need, then even more; you sheltered them from torrent and huddled close to them, with special care, any time they flickered low. You poured forth all of your summonable energies to grow the glowing prospects of your progeny, and seek still to watch, to feel the warmth of their gathering strength. 

Students, learners, you yourselves are the flame, the thing we’ve all gathered around. 

We work to see you burn bright, and delight in your being. 

You owe those who’ve tended you nothing, except to share your spark, your own light, the zeal and ardor of your passions, and the glow of your spirit. We’re all so glad to have you in our midst, and we’ll keep you going for as long as you still need our stoking.