Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations recently shared this excerpt from Rev. Alexia Salvatierra, who has worked for years nurturing movements that challenge the systemic evils of our time. Here she recalls a Scripture reflection that civil rights leader James M. Lawson (b. 1928) often told. Mat their words inspire us to see our small daily tasks as contemplative “kindling: for the fire of the Holy Spirit!:
Reverend James M. Lawson … used to share with the new interns and staff his interpretation of 1 Kings 18:20–39. In the passage, Elijah is competing with the false prophets. They each build an altar of wood and pray for divine fire to come down. The fire comes down for Elijah but not for the false prophets. The wisdom that Jim would draw from the story was that Elijah’s success came from three elements—the fire, the prayer, and the wood. The fire is analogous to what happens in a movement when suddenly the number of people engaged multiplies and floods of human beings break down previously impenetrable barriers. The element of prayer is always critical. But the fire could not come down if there were no wood for it to burn. The building of the wooden altar is the slow, daily process of movement building, the endless conversations and meetings, the actions that seem to have no impact, the multiple defeats of initiatives and proposals. No human being can control when the fire comes down, but we can and must pile up the wood.