When Everything Burns: Tending the Fires Within and Around Us
Reflections on grief, inflammation, and the courage it takes to heal in a world on fire
Wildfires are burning all around me here in the Asheville area. Smoke hangs in the air like a warning. When the wind is just right, ash swirls around my home as if the sky itself is grieving. I have no evacuation orders currently, but I'm staying vigilant. Six months ago, Hurricane Helene destroyed over 400,000 acres of forest in western NC. Millions of trees were destroyed or damaged. All the resulting debris is a tinderbox for fire. High winds and low humidity spread flames fast. All hell breaks loose.
All hell has been breaking loose, but we've turned away. We pretend it's not so. We pretend until the flames are at our own back door. It's not just the forest fires; it's the uncontrolled fires that rage within and between us. Our politics rage as we forget how to come together and work for all, tearing at the very fabric of our society. Our climate is raging in an attempt to come back into balance. Our emotions rage as we've forgotten how to regulate ourselves, resulting in an outbreak of internal and external conflict. Our bodies are full of inflammation creating all manner of illness.
The Inflammation Epidemic
My body has been overly inflamed for years, resulting in chronic pain and chronic itching, burning, and stinging all over my body, at times almost unbearable. I searched for a simple fix but didn't address the underlying issues for way too long. The difficulty of addressing underlying issues is that it takes time to sus out and unravel. I'm talking about years.
We live in a culture that wants relief from symptoms immediately, without dealing with the underlying issues. We come by that innocently in many ways. Think fast food chains on every corner promising meals in minutes, overnight shipping that delivers almost anything to our doorstep with a single click, and microwaveable everything. Western medicine, too, is all about treating the symptoms, but it's not so good at finding the underlying issues, often exacerbating them. If we don't get instant relief, we move on quickly to the next thing. If nothing gives us the relief we want, we turn to numbing agents such as alcohol, drugs, constant scrolling, overeating, or overwork. Anything to give us a moment of reprieve.
The fires we see raging in our forests are a visible form of something that's been building for generations. The climate crisis isn't new. It's been growing beneath the surface while we've been attempting to treat the symptoms or looking away entirely. Our social divisions didn't appear overnight. They've been smoldering, fed by unresolved historical wounds and systems designed to separate us. Our bodies aren't the only things inflamed. Our economy burns through resources faster than the earth can replenish them. Our communities have been breaking down for decades, leaving too many people isolated and alone. Our relationships with the natural world have become increasingly distant as we spend more time with screens than with trees.
All of these fires are different expressions of the same deep imbalance. We've forgotten how to live within limits, how to tend to what matters most, and how to care for the whole.
We want quick fixes. We want technology to save us from our climate crisis without changing how we live. We want political leaders to heal our divisions without doing the difficult work of facing our collective shadows. We want peace without the messy process of reconciliation. We want a pill to make our pain disappear rather than exploring what our bodies are trying to tell us. I get it. The deeper work is harder. It takes longer. It asks more of us. But in the end, it's the only thing that truly heals.
The Courage to Face What Burns
Addressing the fires and inflammation takes time, energy, focus, and deep, unwavering commitment. As a culture, we don't cultivate any of that, so our world burns. We are on the brink now. The burning will continue. We've waited too long.
I know this pattern intimately. We want to look away, to run, to find any escape from what feels too overwhelming to bear. I've done it, too—still do at times. When the inflammation in my body became unbearable, my first instinct was to find something, anything, to make it stop. I bounced from treatment to treatment, practitioner to practitioner, seeking that magical solution. But the real healing only began when I stopped running and turned to face what was happening within me. I've had to do things I wasn't so keen on doing, such as giving up alcohol, sugar, and other foods that aren't good for me, as well as dealing with old family trauma that contributes to my chronic symptoms. And, yes, I also work with excellent practitioners. It’s not either-or, but even the most excellent practitioner won’t help if we don’t do our part in facing the underlying causes.
The philosopher Bayo Akomolafe says, "The times are urgent; let us slow down." This paradox holds profound wisdom. When everything is burning, our instinct is to rush, to solve, to fix immediately. But what if the rushing itself is part of what feeds the flames?
Healing didn't begin until I stopped fighting the symptoms and started listening to the fire. That's when the real work began. And this work isn’t easy, linear, or clear much of the time. And it isn’t just about me.
In their powerful book Inflamed, Rupa Marya and Raj Patel write, "Your body is a map of your world." They draw the connection between personal inflammation and global systems of oppression and extraction, how colonialism, capitalism, and disconnection set everything ablaze: our immune systems, our ecosystems, our nervous systems. The burning in our bodies is not separate from the burning of the world.
Transformation Through Fire
Yes, the world is burning. But listen. Listen. Can you hear the call of something wanting to rise from the ashes? Be still and listen.
You may not hear it right away. You may have to move through your rage first, that fierce, protective anger that rises when you truly see what's happening to our world, to each other, to yourself. Move through it, not around it. Feel its power and let it fuel your commitment to change.
You may feel your despair, that sinking recognition that we can't go back, that some things are already lost, that the world as we knew it is passing away. This is the dark night that precedes any meaningful transformation. As Francis Weller reminds us, this despair isn't something to pathologize. It's the appropriate response to loss.
And your grief. Grief acknowledges all that we love and are losing. Your grief is evidence of your connection, caring, and deep belonging to this world. We grieve because we love.
On the other side of all that, you can hear the call—not bypassing the anger, despair, and grief, but moving through it. The call will be faint at first. If you keep listening, it will grow. It will speak to you. It will ask something of you. "Do you want to help usher in what wants to rise from the ashes?"
If you do, you'll be asked to attend to your own burning. It's not a small ask. In fact, it will likely be the most difficult thing you've ever done. It's like my friend who woke from her coma into terrible agitation and pain—the first step in her healing. It will be uncomfortable, frightening, and painful at times, but necessary to heal and help usher in something new.
What Rises from These Flames?
Fire destroys, but it also makes way for new life. I've read about how forests recover after wildfires. The ash fertilizes the soil. I was surprised to learn that some pine trees right here in the Appalachians need fire to reproduce. The Table Mountain pine, which grows on our ridgetops, has cones that stay sealed with resin until fire melts it away, releasing the seeds. Their cones won't open fully until they feel intense heat! Right in the middle of all that destruction, the seeds for what comes next are there waiting.
I've also seen images of forests after fires. The devastation is shocking. Blackened tree trunks against scorched earth. The loss is palpable. Ancient trees are gone, habitats are destroyed, and the landscape is fundamentally altered. We have to grieve what's gone, deeply grieve. And yet, given time, green shoots push through the ash. Seeds that need heat to germinate begin to sprout. Life finds its way back, not as it was before, but in a new expression. The forest doesn't simply recover; it transforms through loss. Grief and renewal are part of the same process.
Our human journey follows similar patterns. I've seen people, myself included, emerge from personal devastation, loss, illness, and profound disillusionment changed, yes, but renewed in ways they couldn't have imagined before. When the old falls away, something new has room to grow. I've watched this happen again and again. After the burning comes new life. Vicktor Frankl said,
What is to give light must endure burning.
We’re feeling the intense heat. Do we dare draw close enough to let the heat release our seeds of renewal?
Thomas Hübl's work on collective trauma suggests that healing happens not by erasing our wounds but by developing the capacity to be with them, to witness them without turning away. In that witnessing, something shifts. Integration becomes possible, and new patterns can emerge.
I don't think what's trying to emerge from all this burning is asking us to go back to how things were. I don’t believe we can; I wouldn’t want to. I believe we’re being asked to step into something we haven't fully imagined yet – a different way of living with each other and with this earth. A way that remembers we're all connected. A way that understands there are limits we need to honor. A way that helps all of us – people, trees, rivers, creatures – actually thrive together.
We’re not just experiencing collapse. We are in a rite of passage. And like all rites of passage, we must let something die. We must shed old skins, outdated myths, and the illusion that we are separate from the earth and from one another.
The world is burning. Yet, beneath the smoke, I hear a quiet voice calling us toward something new. Not as a return to "normal" (normal was never working), but as a collective remembering. As a commitment to tend this earth, these bodies, and our relationships as sacred again.
Will you answer? Will you tend your own flames, facing what burns within you, and will you help bring forth what wants to be born in the world? Will you join with others, creating pockets of possibility where new ways of being together can take root?
Let the smoke teach you. Let the grief break you open. Let the fire show you what matters. This is not the end. It is a moment of profound choice.
The fires will continue. But what rises from them is partly up to us.
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"The times are urgent; let us slow down." Love this quote. Thanks for sharing it!