The God of Fire
God is Charged
The word God stirs people, sometimes sets off explosive or loving feelings. It gets a reaction, either good, bad, or indifferent. In depth psychotherapy and writing, I help folks explore shock, trauma, and healing both emotionally and spiritually. Simply saying “God” is meaningful to different people in different ways, and that is to be respected.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American transcendentalist philosopher wrote in The Over-Soul, “How dear, how soothing to man, arises the idea of God, peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes and disappointments! When we have broken our god of tradition and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with his presence.”
A Fire in the Heart
My novel, The Unholy, generated quite a reaction among traditional religious people. Some posted angry reviews that I dared explore the dark side of religion. They were upset, some enraged. I meant no ill will. Metaphysical thrillers make us ponder and question religious matters, human feelings, and the meaning of life. Dramatic storytelling pops out the good and the bad. It sets a fire in the heart for matters authentic and sacred.
Goddess of the Wild Thing didn’t provoke the same outcry among hard-core religionists. The story is about complicated love, the dark side of religion not as upfront and center. However, this story is laced with religious trauma injuring the capacity to love. Traditional religion, the dark side of spirituality, has profoundly impacted relationships and life. The challenge for one woman is to find a way through her spiritual dilemma so that the potential for love can emerge.
My soon-to-be-released thriller, The Goddess of Everything, taps into compromised love – a heart divided. The power of the dark side of religion serves as a backdrop for conflict and hoped-for resolution. Husband and wife are nearly torn apart by the toxicity of a religious mother’s love gone bad.
The antidote, in all my stories, for religious wounding is fire in the heart. It is truth to self and to those who are themselves true. It is the experience of life, not perfect or without problems, but real and true and passionate. This is fire in the heart, this is God.
Visionary Fiction and the God of Fire
In visionary fiction, novels of crisis and consciousness, fire sets each page ablaze. We’re challenged to let go of what no longer works for us, including dead ideas about religion and God. God, as Emerson addresses, is accessed only by shedding lifeless traditions and rhetoric. God isn’t in the dogma, tradition, or rhetoric. God is, in Emerson’s words, ” . . . the infinite enlargement of the heart with a power of growth to a new infinity on every side.” Step into infinity on every side, discover the God of Fire, as the imaginary realm of visionary fiction draws you in and nourishes your soul.
“Live Deeply…Read Daily”