Isaiah’s Six
We are Seraphim. We take the form of fire. Our wings are of fire. Six of them each, we have in the sixth chapter. Two fire-wings cover our faces, two, our private parts, and with two, we fly.
With massive wings of fire, we fly. Our six wings are each thrice the length of our bodies. They each flap and flame as a falling fir. We purify as we fly. And we sing God’s glory as we purify.
The prophets have wings of fire as well. Indeed, we grant them their prophetic voice only after they have been burned. Their tongue is released with a hot ember and with our tongs, we place the embers.
We are Seraphim.
I am Seraph. I am one of the Seraphim. My name comes from the Hebrew word “seraph” which means “to burn.” When we speak in the temple, it fills with smoke and its timbers shake in the midst of our fire, and our voice.
Our fire is part of all fire and all fire is part of us.
We clean.
We prophesy. We destroy. We create fields ready for new growth. We are fanned by ecclesial arrogance and human greed.
We are not in Manhattan on 9/11, nor are we in California on 9/12.
We are in the church. Now. We are busy destroying. We are burning episcopal thrones, resolutions, and miters. We melt brass candlesticks into rivers of lead. We shake church timbers with our ferocious fires. We will not be domesticated in pretty icons of flames-on-foreheads or tongue-tips.
We rage. We transform. We burn canons. We burn pornography. We scorch the desks and vestments of bishops and clergy alike. We leap over some and land on others, purifying as we go. We cannot be bought with jeweled bibles or sizzling cows.
We do not respect righteous women in hats and gloves in their first pew, nor sleepy men holding their purses, their places, their tongues.
We have no concern for the dowager empress over the pauper, begging by the church door. But the pauper needs no purification. He remains cool with the waters of cold rivers around him and the fertile ferns curled above him and pillowed beneath him.
We are Seraphim.
We sing a black and a green trihagion with the hot breath of “Holy. Holy. Holy is the land.” We do not speak to God.
Like you, we speak near God.
And God listens in the whirlwind of our flames and our love.
And beneath the whirlwind, on the beautiful planet, we cleanse its leperous church with a virus of distance and generational change, and we cleanse cancerous humanity with new storms.
We are Seraphim.
We love life.
We love the earth and its cosmos-home.
We burn with love.
We cannot be harnessed. We have been let loose. We fly with wings of fire and prophetic disaster for the counsels, the vestries, and the board rooms.
We are Seraphim. We love. We praise. We conflagrate. We transfigure.—
Image: Mirv at en.wikipedia / Public domain
Charles LaFond is a fundraiser, poet, author, novelist and Master Potter on Whidbey Island where he lives alone, on a cliff by the Salish Sea with his dog Sugar.