The Cold Fire
When I think about my childhood,
It burns.
It’s an entire house set ablaze,
And I can’t escape.
I’m frozen in place like a bad dream.
When I’m shaken to wake,
I’m still here, burning.
But now, it burns like a fire in a fireplace.
And it’s cold outside.
And I can’t get in.
I’m always here,
Caught somewhere in between.
While the fire burns,
But never keeps me warm.
This is an allegory of hell.
The Church reveals hell not as a place abandoned by God,
but as a condition of the soul before Him.
On the Day of Judgment, the wicked will behold His Light —
and it will strike them like the remembrance of childhood:
filled with love,
but eternally out of reach.
And it will burn.
But the righteous will be kept forever by His warmth.
Though eternity belongs to the age to come,
the same fire burns even now.
To those who draw near, it gives light and heat.
But to those turned away,
it feels like darkness.
And they reach for anything to keep them warm.
But even then —
they can turn around.
And no matter how far they’ve wandered,
they see the Light shining.
And every step back brings them closer to its warmth.
The love we search for from childhood
is not found in experiences or things —
it is found in God.
And it is only seen by the pure in heart.
Once the heart can see again,
as it once did when we were children,
that love will return —
breathed back into life,
one breath at a time.
Just keep growing toward God,
like plants reaching for the sun.