The fire that doesn't let you sleep

 

Paolo Cugini

 

 

 For the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light (Luke 16:8).

At night, when the houses close their eyes and the streets return to silence with the footsteps of the last traveler, certain questions breathe again. During the day, we had kept them occupied: a word, a commitment, an answer learned long ago. Now they are here, sitting beside the bed. They don't ask for reassurance. They ask for someone to have the courage to listen to them. It is at this hour that religion reveals one of its most subtle temptations: to become a place of refuge not only from fear, but also from the effort of thinking. A roof under which to shelter one's anxiety, until it is forgotten. The answers are already there, neatly arranged on the shelves. Beautiful, smooth, ready for any circumstance. All we need to do is pick one up and place it over the wound. It doesn't matter if the wound continues to bleed: at least we have found the words to not look at it.

The danger isn't having a tradition, identifying with a faith, or receiving a word that precedes us. The danger begins when what we've received exempts us from being present. When an answer is used to close a question before we've even grappled with its pain. When we say we believe and, without realizing it, mean only that we no longer want to seek. Then even the Mystery becomes manageable. We give it a name, a place, a time. We frequent it without allowing ourselves to be touched. We know what to say in the face of death, injustice, a loneliness that finds no voice. But knowing what to say doesn't mean we've understood; sometimes it simply means having created a distance beyond which nothing can hurt us. Night, however, shortens distances. It leaves the empty glass on the table, a photograph, the message to which we have not responded. And no formula, however precise, can respond for us.

A soul can fade away like this, silently. Not from a lack of religious words, but from their excess, when they become an impervious shelter to life. Thought flattens, loses its prominence and cracks; it no longer encounters anything that forces it to change. It repeats what it's always said, it approves what it's always approved. And slowly, it ends up resembling everyone else, not in the brotherhood of differences, but in the anonymity of dormant consciences. This is not an accusation to be leveled at a particular group of people. It's a possibility that passes through each of us. Even those who love questions can transform them into a pose; even those who proclaim themselves free can inhabit rigid answers. No one is immune from the temptation to turn their convictions into a cushion. Yet, when this happens to faith, the contradiction stings: we entrust ourselves to the Mystery so as not to have to encounter it again.

The Jesus of fire, evoked by this quest, interrupts that very slumber. The fire he brings to earth is not like a lamp lit to make a closed room more comfortable. It is a presence that sets us moving again. It illuminates what we preferred to leave in the shadows, warms our stiffened hands, makes it impossible to call simple self-preservation life. The woman and man of faith, then, are not figures without tremors. They carry an ember within them. They have eyes capable of focusing on what others pass by distractedly: a tired face, a childish question, a door left closed. Their desire to know is not born from the desire to possess more answers, but from the awareness that every life they encounter demands a new listening.

That fire is not fanaticism. It does not authorize burning others, imposing oneself, dividing the world between those who know and those who must obey. If it turns into contempt, it has already betrayed the life it claims to defend. The holy fire makes us more attentive, no longer blind; more open to being questioned, no longer greedy to be right. It burns, above all, our pretense of having arrived. The truth, on this journey, is not an object to be clutched in the fist. It comes to us and surpasses us. We recognize fragments of it: in a finally sincere word, in a forgiveness that costs, in the gesture of someone who stays when it would be easier to walk away. We gather them, we try to bring them together. Something illuminates. But empty spaces remain, and those voids are not necessarily the failure of the search: they can be the place where the search begins again. For this reason, the Christian with the fire within does not confuse fidelity with immobility. He can cherish a word and continue to ask himself how to live it. He can recognize a path and discover that he has traveled it poorly. He can admit he doesn't know, without that ignorance becoming a shame to hide. Authentic research doesn't erase what he's found: it lifts it from the dust of habit, exposing it once again to the test of existence.

There's effort in all this. There are nights when no fragment seems to fit together and prayer remains an unanswered voice. There's no need to feign enthusiasm. The fire, sometimes, is just an ember beneath the ashes: the desire not to lie, the decision not to turn away, the question that persists even when we're too tired to utter it. Walking can only mean guarding that ember until morning. Not all stillness, however, is death. There is the rest that restores our breath and the silence in which a word can finally mature. We are not called to relentless agitation, nor to make restlessness a new measure of our worth. What kills the soul is another tranquility: the one that no longer wants to be disturbed by anyone, that has placed even God in a place from which he can ask nothing.

Living peace leaves the door open. Dead stillness closes it. The former allows us to pause and then set out again; the latter persuades us that there is no longer any place to go. This is the difference that the night makes visible, when silence can be listening or escape, waiting or anesthesia. Perhaps faith begins to find its breathing space when it stops offering itself as an exemption from life. When it doesn't promise to spare us all questions, but helps us bear their weight. When it doesn't make us identical, but calls us by name and exposes us to the singularity of others. When an answer, rather than concluding everything, opens up a responsibility: if I believe this, what changes in the way I will look at those around me tomorrow?

Outside, the city still sleeps. One window remains lit. We don't know who watches behind that glass, what pain it harbors, what question keeps it from closing its eyes. But we can recognize something of ourselves in that stubborn light. Life hasn't stopped calling. Mystery hasn't stopped eluding us and offering itself. We don't have all the answers. We have a few fragments, a path that can only be seen for a moment, and the fire. Just enough to keep our souls from surrendering to the slumber of things already decided. Just enough to get up, approach the window, and wait for the first glimmer without ceasing to search.