Ashes

 I remember a friend of mine once saying of himself, "My life is in ruins."  Things were not going the way he had planned.  He felt that he could not get control in his work and was, in summary, a failure.  As I reflected on this I realize that when people are in such a situation they see as ruinous, they are seeing only the ashes.  The fire is beneath it all.  When someone comes into an addiction recovery program all they see is the ashes of their life.  Not all is lost, but many of us need to see only the ashes if we are to take a serious turn for the better.  But hope is one of the things a new person gets in recovery.  With hope they begin to see "with a new pair of glasses" as someone wrote, and they see the fire beneath the ashes.  When you see a log fireplace of ashes the first thing you do is move the ashes around to see if there is a spark of fire beneath.  That is what the recovery path is.  That is what the contemplative life is.  We don't create a fire.  It is there, but hidden by a neglectful, or abandoned life that could have been fire.