One’s skill becomes a craft when soul and destiny are tied to it. Often, this skill seems like something found, when in reality skill is a blossom made visible by the fertile soil of necessity. While necessity may be the soil, the rain which draws the bloom into our world is one’s proclivities. Long before we hear our soul’s true song, our hearts and minds play a duet of strings. So when the rest of the world gets to hear the tune, it is sincere. If we are lucky, our advocation becomes our craft, and if we are even more blessed, it becomes our vocation. The final bow on this wreath of blooms is to remain true to what we do.

Many years ago, I wrote this small essay, “The Fire Starter,” in an attempt to express to myself the nature of what I “do.” By that time, I realized that my vocation was more  authentically identified with the act of starting things than by the specifics of what was started. I had tried so many different businesses, taken so many chances, and traveled to such a variety of places. Yet, when folks asked me what I “do,” I always had trouble answering what should have been a fairly simple question. I still grapple with the question as much as people roll their eyes with my answer. So here’s my reply: I am a fire-starter, by advocation, craft and vocation. This feels as true to me today as it did 20 years ago when I wrote this piece. 

—Raymond Brimble

The Fire Starter

Many, many years ago, before cities and before the time of writing, there lived a man whose job was to travel the world to assist in the starting of campfires for all the people he encountered. No one told him to do this, and no one taught him how. He learned the craft himself, both by accident and necessity, when he was stranded in the wilderness alone, cold and hungry. Through the course of time, in his aloneness, he discovered various methods by which one could ignite a flame. He survived because of it. And with this knowledge, he set out again on his journey, knowing if he ever required it, he could start his own fire.

The man did not intend to make a job of fire-starting.  But wherever he went, he discovered folks who could not seem to get their own fires going. For whatever reason, they did not know the principles, have the patience, or use the right tools. Was he supposed to let them shiver in the cold or be unable to cook their evening meal? No. Better that he assist—it usually took just a little time. Occasionally they would pay him, often with the offer to share their meal or sleep in their wooden house for the evening. As the word spread through the countryside that the fire starter could help, folks began to pay him with clothing, bits of silver, and other valuables. His advocation became his vocation. This is how it happened—by the man doing just what he did.

One of the features of a fire starter was that he had to keep moving—there was always another fire in another village to ignite. But he did his job so well, and so unobtrusively, that the townspeople often would ask him to stay so they could pay him to be a fire tender.  This was due not only to their inability to start their own fires, but also their laziness in tending the fire once it got started. Better to leave this to an “expert,” they would rationalize. But the fire starter was not a fire tender. He explained that, once started, the fire was the responsibility of the villagers, and they were required to look after it, lest it go out again. Some would heed his warning and learned to keep their fires hot and constant. Others had better things to do, and soon their fires went out and they were looking for the fire-starter again. The fire starter somehow knew that for the fire to have life, he must let go of the responsibility after the spark and force those who would be nurtured by it to become the keepers. Where this process worked, he noticed that it was good for the fire and good for the tenders.

One night, around a roaring fire he had started earlier, a town elder asked the fire starter why he did not stay and keep the fire once it had been started. He explained his point of view: every fire has a life of its own—the spark, smoke, the burst of flame, the steady heat of a mature fire, the red embers of a flame that has lost its fuel.  Each stage of this life has its own tenders. Each tender must learn the nature of the stage. The fire starter knew the spark, was the spark, lived by the spark. One’s advocation has a lot to do with one’s nature. Happy is the person who gains some understanding of both.