The Steward’s Fire
On Holding Light When the World Grows Dark
There are days when the words feel like smoke. Rising, curling, vanishing before they ever reach another mind. Days when I wonder whether the work of tending this small, stubborn fire matters at all. When the world feels consumed by noise, outrage, and cynicism, it’s easy to believe that words no longer build things.
Words are the oldest tools we have. They are how we make meaning out of chaos, how we forge trust and purpose, remember who we are and what we’ve learned. Every civilization that has ever fallen first lost its faith in the power of language. The belief that truth, when spoken plainly, could still move hearts and shape destinies. That’s the danger we face now: not just the collapse of systems, but the quiet corrosion of belief in laws, order, and words.
So, I tend to the fire. I speak, I write, I argue, and I hope. The alternative is cold, uncaring darkness. I have seen what happens when the flames of shared purpose die out. When we stop seeing one another through the light of understanding. Even if it feels like I am shouting into a void, I know that if someone, somewhere, hears, these words which float like embers may still spark and ignite.
That’s the task of we few, first Stewards: to keep the fire alive. To hold the flame steady enough for other to find it and carry it forward.
When the Flames Flicker
The week since my last article began in triumph and ended in quiet despair.
Only days ago, the headlines spoke of an electoral shift. A clear rejection of the creeping authoritarianism that has shadowed this nation. Across states and districts, candidates who spoke for fairness, reason, and rule of law prevailed. For a moment, the public pulse quickened, and it felt like the fever might be breaking.
And then, as a thief in the night late on Sunday, came the capitulation. Within days, the party that enjoyed such victories, entrusted with a show of faith and a demand for determination, turned to the familiar refuge of compromise and appeasement. The continuing resolution is alive again after 40 days of ailing before the Senate. Laden with little more than the concessions that will cut into the marrow of working households while sparing the architects of harm. The ink on the congratulatory postcards wasn’t even dry before the terms of surrender were signed.
It’s a familiar rhythm: the people rally, the tide turns, and then, just as the light begins to grow, the torch is dropped. Each cycle erodes the public faith a little more, and the cynicism spreads like smoke in the lungs.
This is where many good people begin to dim inside. When exhaustion masquerades as maturity. When outrage cools into resignation. When the fire dies down, not from a lack of fuel, but a lack of tending.
Stewardship was never about the easy burn of outrage. It is the craft of the steady flame. The discipline of those who keep the watch while others turn away.
Tending the Coals
There is a difference between the fire of anger and the fire of purpose.
Anger flares hot, burns bright, and dies fast. Purpose burns slower, deeper, demanding patience, air, and constant tending. Most people never learn that difference. The Steward must.
Every generation faces its own wave of exhaustion. A moment when even the righteous begin to doubt whether effort matters. The cynic calls it realism. The weary call it wisdom. But the Steward knows it for what it is: the smothering of the coals.
If this past week has shown us anything, it is that progress cannot rely on the institutions of the compromised and captured. The people’s will and focus may falter and shift with the headlines, but the Steward’s duty remains. Preserve clarity amid confusion. Maintain the light leading forward when the establishment flickers.
We cannot afford to surrender the flames of the forge or the watch post to those who would twist the heat towards greed or douse the light in the face of cruelty. It is for us to make our blows in reshaping and repairing this country on the anvil of law, order, and service. It is for us to raise high, light the path, and turn back the wicked.
To tend the Steward’s fire is to remember that creation and vigilance are the same act. The watchman and the smith are kin. Both keepers of the flame, guardians of the work that must not go cold.
Keepers of the Flame
Fire does not belong to any one of us. It belongs to all who refuse the dark. Each word spoken in truth, each act done in good faith, feeds it. So long as even one heart still tends to the coals, the light endures. And the work of the Steward goes on.
Thank you for reading and listening to these words. If you find that they light a fire in you or give you the warm and fuzzies, let me know, and consider sharing the light of your flames with others.