The Difference Between a Bonfire and a Steady Flame

In Kildare, Ireland, there was a flame that burned for over a thousand years.

Not a bonfire. Not a dramatic blaze that demanded attention and then burned out. A single, steady flame — tended by nineteen priestesses in rotating shifts, never allowed to go out.

St. Brigid's flame.

I carry a lineage connection to this flame. Which means I carry this teaching in my bones: The sacred is not sustained by intensity. It is sustained by consistency.

We live in a culture that worships bonfires. The big launch. The viral moment. The dramatic transformation that happens in a weekend workshop. We're trained to believe that impact requires intensity — that if we're not burning bright enough to be seen from far away, we're not doing it right.

But bonfires burn out. They consume everything in their vicinity and then collapse into ash. The people who build their lives around dramatic intensity often end up exhausted, depleted, cycling between burnout and recovery.

Brigid's flame offers a different model: What if the goal isn't to burn as bright as possible, but to burn as long as necessary?

This has practical implications for how you work with your energy.

A steady flame requires fuel management. You can't pour everything you have into one moment and expect to keep burning. You have to pace yourself. You have to know when to add fuel and when to let the fire settle.

A steady flame requires protection. The priestesses didn't just light the fire once and walk away. They built structures around it. They shielded it from wind. They tended it through storms. Your devotion needs the same protection — boundaries around your energy, practices that maintain the flame when external conditions are harsh.

A steady flame requires showing up. Not when you feel inspired. Not when conditions are perfect. But day after day, in the unglamorous work of maintenance that no one applauds.

This is the fifth pillar: Fanning the Flames. Not in the sense of making the fire bigger, but in the sense of keeping it alive. Understanding that devotion is not a single dramatic act but a sustained relationship with what matters.

Tomorrow is Imbolc — Brigid's holy day. It marks the first stirrings of spring beneath the frozen ground. The light returning, but slowly. Without fanfare. Just the steady, persistent return of what never really left.

What if your devotion looked like that?

— Shanti