Author: Charles Fivaz

The long, lonely hill-climb led Adam away from the land of Aaron’s Dream.

More a nightmare than a dream, he thought, as he recalled the long and bitter struggle through one of the bleakest times of his life. The sky matched his mood as a pall of dark grey cloud pressed down on the unforgiving landscape. A stiff breeze chilled the air and cut past his open collar. The land changed as he climbed. The ploughed red soil of the valley gave way to steep stony slopes. Stubborn scrub and the occasional tree clung tenaciously to its surface. ‘I can relate to that,’ Adam said out loud. He had found in himself over the past year a blind resistance to aridity.

Crossing the emptiness of no-man’s-land, Adam sensed that it was a place of trial but his belief that some good would come of this search grew stronger.

He thought of the time before this long search had started: a secure job, a steady income, a comfortable life. Methods and routines on the farm were finely tuned, everything ran like clockwork. His skills were put to good use, his talents applied to the benefit of many in the community – he had felt contented and accomplished. More: he had felt valued and important.

But after Helen’s death came the restless nights, the doubts, the reappraisal. Finally, the yearning for something more.

He had started talking to himself – and, worse, talking in clichés. Where do we go from here? he would say, over and again. A vague embarrassment would creep over him whenever he caught himself exclaiming, There’s got to be more to life than this! He wondered if anyone had heard him.

The turning point came unexpectedly.

He had been in the southern paddock, ploughing all morning despite a persistent drizzle. When it started to pour down heavily, he simply stopped in his tracks, unhitched the plough, and walked the horses home. ‘I’m not doing this anymore,’ he announced to Hannah as he came in, drenched. ‘We’ve a bit of money to go on with. After that I’ll find another way.’

It wasn’t a transient mood. ‘We’ll be okay,’ he assured Hannah, unable to believe the words coming out of his mouth. ‘We’ll work it out as we go.’

It was only a few days later that Hannah went missing. He was sure that she was doing what he had in mind; working it out as she went.

Did my crisis trigger something in her? he wondered for the hundredth time as he bedded down for the night.

With a blanket of cloud smothering the land, the night was pitch-black. Not a star, not a sliver of a moon could be seen. It was bitterly cold, too, as the breeze picked up and blasted bone-chilling air through the gaps in his bedroll. Adam lay staring up at the blackness, unable to sleep. If he was brutally honest, he had to admit that it wasn’t the cold affecting him but depression.

But to acknowledge that would have been admitting defeat.

He flung the covers off and stood up. Groping in the dark for his pack, he pulled out a small kerosene lamp and struck a match. In the flicker of lamplight he could see that there was enough kindling around to start a fire, so he heaped the twigs and dead scrub-grass into a small pile. Using a stalk, he transferred the flame of the lamp to the pile of tinder. The broken limb of a tree provided good fuel and in a short time Adam had a lively campfire going.

He stood before its consoling warmth, allowing it to penetrate the frost within himself.

He stood motionless for longer than he knew, mesmerised by the flicker and flare of the burning wood, until he fell into a kind of trance. What followed could only be described as a waking-dream.

Faith, he heard the fire say.

‘Faith!’ he repeated out loud, challenging the fire. ‘What does it mean? What’s it all about?’ He waited for an answer, but there was none.

‘I have faith,’ he went on. ‘Boundless, unlimited… but it has not moved mountains. In fact, I don’t want mountains moved, just to find my daughter.’

Faith, said the fire, is not willpower.

‘Willpower? I’m not trying to make my hopes and desires a reality by sheer unflagging, inflexible willpower.’ He was gazing directly into the flames.

The fire was silent again.

Adam was shocked. I’m talking to the fire, he thought. That’s okay. But it’s answering back. That’s not.

Adam has always got his way by hard work and his own determined unswerving stubbornness, the fire said. And he calls that faith.

For a moment, the ground seemed to tilt. Adam felt disoriented. ‘What is faith?’ he asked the fire.

It is the flame that consumes the wood, the fire said. It is the emptying of power to be empowered. 

Adam stared at the flames licking the log, the flecks of ash falling helplessly to the earth. Helpless, empty of power: that was one thing he had always feared. And faith – strong, tolerant, resilient faith – that was the one thing on which he had always prided himself. ‘I have no faith?’ he asked incredulously.

Faith is directed to the Other, the fire said, not to the self.

Adam dropped to his knees and remained this way for some time before speaking again. ‘I have no faith. It’s taken a year of faithfully searching for Hannah to realise it.’ He recognised how steeped in irony the situation was. ‘I have been tested and failed utterly.’

Failure is necessary, the fire said. Only in weakness can faith bloom, only in brokenness can faith take root. There are some seed-cases so hard that only fire breaks them open so they can grow.

‘Have I been that blind? That closed?’

The glow of the flames danced across his face as he fell into a reflective silence.

When Adam woke, he remembered not only his conversation with the fire but its strange song as the last of its embers died.

The One holds all things together for good

The breath of the fire and the dance of the wood

In faith I go to the Great and the Good

Peace came on Adam when he admitted he had nothing left, when he was as empty and burnt out as the circle of white ashes. The dark, though it was still there, had turned strangely to light, and time seemed suspended. Whether or not the whole experience was a dream he was never afterwards able to say. He only knew that it changed everything. The seed-case of his life had finally cracked.

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