Step Two INFLAME

To inflame is to intensify your strength and center the prelude of a roar in your throat. It’s the moment you decide when and how the bellow that no one expects from you will sound, and you tune the pitch that will break the silence everyone thinks you belong in. This is the moment of stillness where you make wise decisions and plan the sequence of your steps.

To become inflamed is to transform the air by inhaling the wind that moves the mills, not to grind wheat, but to show that we are crazy. It’s how we prepare to make mistakes, get up, start again, learn from errors and never forget them, laugh alone, end the silences, be crushed by reality without our knees buckling. We will only do this to raise our hands in gratitude.

After our journey into who we are, which we took in Step One, “Inhale,” it’s time to process and value all the information we’ve gathered. Now is the time to be resilient, which has nothing to do with enduring agony, but rather with being like a sling that accumulates immense pressure, on the verge of bursting, and is ready to release the stone that will knock down giants. This is also a time to be still, to let the peace of our mind become dynamic. We can be so ignited by the fever pitch of thought that our ideas end up as smoke and steam without fire. Becoming inflamed is like the soldiers’ supper before the call to battle, where we enjoy the wine of ideas before facing them.

This second step in roaring consists of holding in the air to create storms, exploding the crystals of our thoughts, flying flags, making those who dream of ending their lives in one leap acquire the power of flight. Inhale when you feel the downpour and hold in your chest a concentration of air capable of spawning tempests.

THE TEMPEST COLLECTOR

Who am I? I am hoarder of storms, a collector of tempests, a stubborn adversary of downpours. I am the one who one day threw away the maps to redraw them.

I was a man who came from a coastal city, with wooden-beamed houses, fishermen at dawn, and coconuts for soccer balls. My travels led me to strange places, which are my natural habitat. I have ascended from dark valleys along winding paths. I have encountered the forest’s winter and the desert’s graveyard. I slowly forged my way, accompanied by the cry of crows and the murmur of snakes stirring the fallen leaves. It’s not cold in my heart; God’s summer melted the glaciers within me.

THE CALM COMES AFTER THE STORM. DAMN! HOW MANY MORE STORMS ARE THERE?

During the journey, the tide shook my boat several times, but I decided to endure the careening. On land I am a Sherpa who has climbed to the summit, but I don’t stop there, I want to cross the mist that lies between the mountains. I am passionate about peaks, but more so about their horizons. I live to be moved by the immensity, by all that I cannot imagine. From the summit you can see new seas, and you must descend to soak in them. I want to be moved to tears by all the sailing.

For me, the sublime isn’t only a quality of nature, it’s the immense beauty that can only be understood by the senses. Beauty is born of balance, but the sublime surpasses harmony and settles halfway between imagination and reason. Navigating life incites restlessness, disturbance, even terror, and the possibilities of achieving the impossible, touching on the absolute, the transcendent, the abstract, everything that isn’t perceived by the physical but is clear to the eyes of the spirit.

I am one who claims an exaltation that aspires to the divine, to the superior, to the extraordinary. I steer between tremors and ecstasy, I am enraptured as I head to the transcendent, to the violent waves that collide between the absurd and the real. I charge ahead, suppressing the vertigo, whether it’s my turn to carry the banner on the front line or to defend tooth and nail at the rear guard.

While holding our breath, we must set the strategy to move forward, and to do so we will transform what we have learned about ourselves into the intensity of our roar.

STORMS OF HATRED

When a thunderstorm breaks over the sea, there are two ways to protect ourselves. The first is to get out of the water and seek refuge on the shore; the second is to submerge ourselves in the water as far down as possible because the electric currents will spread over the surface without reaching the depths. The same thing happens with hatred. To protect ourselves from its electric current we can either run away or we can swim down vigorously to reach deeper waters. I always choose the latter.

I have been called ignorant, conceited, a false prophet, a sinner, impious, a fanatic, a snake charmer, a trickster, lukewarm, a conspirer, a charlatan, an executioner. I have been accused of disregarding the Bible and of focusing solely on it; of not being involved enough in politics and of organizing coups d’état; of being a “progressive” and also “right-wing”; superpatriotic and antipatriotic; a pagan and a fundamentalist. I have been called a misogynist and my wife’s puppet; they say I’m a traditionalist, but also that I try to destroy institutions; that I always say the same thing and I contradict myself.

Sometimes it’s hard to know how to respond to these cases. While letting them go can be tough, it’s a mistake to give in to the temptation of those who are just trying to get a reaction from you with their insults. I often wonder why we let these displays of hatred stop us in our tracks, but I’m more concerned about why some people bring their lives to a standstill just to deal with what the people they despise say.

If you have time to humiliate, belittle, slander, hurt, violate, or judge others, you’re only showing your enormous fragility disguised as virtuosity. Gaining relevance by destroying others is the most pathetic notoriety to aspire to. Social media is now the Roman Colosseum where thousands crave seeing others perish. It’s as if the Inquisition never ended. It just moved to these platforms with millions of executioners who never accomplished anything. Your life stings and annoys them because they don’t understand that there are other ways of living, of being, of thinking. So they hide behind their hypocrisy, accusing you of being evil, while they live in total darkness. They pretend to be saints, geniuses, lofty thinkers, but their souls are withered, their hearts are hollow, oozing venom.

YOU CAN’T STOP AN INSULT FROM HURTING YOUR HEART, BUT YOU CAN STOP IT FROM DEFINING WHO YOU ARE.

In this digital world, even when others see you lying broken on the ground, they still want to divvy up what is left of you. But even though they’re laughing now, one day that look will be wiped off their faces, because we’re all going to have to pay the final bill.

JESUS’S FAME

Behind a lot of hatred is the search for fame, raw and unfiltered, like the goddess with copper lips who spread rumors just for the fun of it.^I Some people want a kind of fame that is mistaken for a racket—they want to appear behind the noise as their scandals bring down roofs. They want the flash of fame but aren’t interested in seeing the images.

They should look instead for themselves in the example of the man who enjoyed the greatest fame in this world—paradoxically, the humblest man who ever lived. No greater fame has been known than that of Jesus. Christ was a celebrity in his day, a true rock star who stopped caravans and whose presence in the world disrupted markets. The word multitude appears more than fifty times in the Gospels.

Jesus was acclaimed in the houses of the rich and the poor; those who loved Him and those who wanted to deceive Him fought for His presence. To get closer to Jesus, paralyzed individuals asked their friends to lower them down from the roofs of the houses where He was. And to honor Him, they poured nard perfume on His feet.

He was famous for many things, not just one; for being a rabbi and a false prophet, a healer and a rebel, a savior and a provocateur. Jesus had the fame that came from His deeds, His teachings, His interpretation of the Word, His healings, His forgiveness, His sacrifice, and above all, His love.

Jesus built His fame with truth and kindness, by putting others at the center, and, above all of them, God, His father. He didn’t just have a message, He was the message itself, and He communicated it with His life. Everyone wanted to host Him; in the streets they called Him “Lamb of God.” The puppet king shouted, “John has risen!”; the legalists said, “It is Elijah.” He climbed the mountain, and His prodigies mingled the rich with the peons, the blameless with the sinners. He received a Pharisee who wanted to mock Him, and instead of insulting him, He taught him how to be born again. The devil himself invited Him to his riches, and He who came only to give refused them. He made those who didn’t know Him walk, and He didn’t even tell them His name.

Jesus built His fame by acknowledging that it wasn’t His, that everything He did came from the Father. He sought the endorsement of the sick, the humiliated, the crippled, the blind, the maimed, the prostitutes, the despised. He became famous for them and because of them.

1. I. The Roman goddess Fama (in Greek mythology Feme) was the goddess of rumors, gossip, and fame. She is usually depicted with a trumpet.