Four Years by the Fire

How a Simple Soulful Practice Became a Sustaining Community Across Cities

written by Anna Del Castillo, Our Own Deep Wells Cofounder

HDS community members participated in an outdoor Fire Salon with Writer-in-Residence Terry Tempest Williams, facilitator Maya Pace, MTS ‘23, and writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit on the book Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, co-edited by Solnit and Thelma Young-Lutunatabua. Photo: Caroline Cataldo

This week, Wynn (my partner) and I hosted the final Fire Salon gathering of the year here in Washington, D.C. After everyone left, I stood in my kitchen rinsing soup bowls, blowing out the candles arranged at the small altar in the center of the living room, and felt the space still humming with the warmth of the last few hours—connection, laughter, stories that went deep, the unmistakable sense of being held in community. And suddenly it struck me:

This marks four full years of Fire Salons.

The first Fire Salon began around an outdoor fire pit at Harvard Divinity School. It was fall 2021, that tender, disorienting time when the campus had just reopened after a dangerous, grief-filled pandemic. Students were mourning, the loss of loved ones, the loss of a sense of certainty, the loss of the world we thought we knew.

My dear friend and mentor, Terry Tempest Williams, was offering a brilliant public lecture series that semester exploring climate catastrophe and climate grief. The speakers, climate activists calling in from all over the world, shared real-time “weather reports” from the frontlines. There was urgency, heartbreak, and a call to action woven through every session.

The Fire Salons were our response to the need beneath all of that:a place to slow down, to gather under the sky, to share a meal, and to sit with the question of how to live well in and heal a world on fire.

We didn’t know if anyone would come. We printed little posters, sent a handful of texts, and hoped. What transpired was holy and wholly unexpected. Week after week, about twenty people (students, community members, neighbors) gathered at that fire pit passing pizza, sharing stories, witnessing each other, and trying together to make sense of this human moment. Those gatherings became grounding community for all of us. Beautiful, unlikely friendships formed: intergenerational, cross-disciplinary, cross-university. Some of those friendships have braided into my life so deeply that four of those original attendees will stand with me at my upcoming wedding, two as friends, one as officiant, and one as the person I will marry. A delight of the fire indeed.

Most of us no longer call Cambridge home, but we carry the warmth and wisdom of those nights with us. The Fire Salon community at HDS found new facilitators and many students started their own versions of fire salons in their new hometowns. When my partner and I moved to Washington, DC, we nervously decided to try and start a Fire Salon here (ya’ll know moving to a new city is vulnerable). We wondered if the name might feel strange or intimidating to new friends. But to our surprise, people came. And then they kept coming. Soon they were volunteering to host, to share readings, to facilitate, to invite friends. The circle kept widening in joyful ways.

Now, our DC Fire Salon is a living, breathing community. Once a month, we share a potluck meal, gather around a cluster of candles (our city-living version of a fire), and ground ourselves in meditation and a wisdom offering. Someone offers a reading or song. We sit in silence, receiving it. Then the conversation unfolds in an unstructured, emergent, braided way that allows for unearthing the stories we’ve lived and the wisdom we’ve inherited. What I love is that there is no single teacher in the room, rather everyone is a wisdom sharer. Everyone gives, and everyone receives.

Four years in, I’m struck by how simple the structure is and how profound the impact has been. A fire (or a few candles). A shared meal. A circle of people willing to show up with honesty. An invitation to slow down in a world that rarely lets us.

Maybe that’s all a Fire Salon really is:a reminder that community is a deep well we can draw from, and that the fire has always known how to bring us home to one another.

I was lucky enough to study theology and religion for five years and to practice soulful ways of gathering, like the Fire Salons, during my time in divinity school. But now, in my everyday life, I notice that friends often look to me for permission: permission to lean into soulful or spiritual practices, to create circles of intention, to host gatherings that feel countercultural in their simplicity. While a part of me feels honored to be asked (truly please always reach out), another part recognizes that their hesitation isn’t about not knowing how. It’s about living in a society that rarely gives people permission to create intentional, vulnerable, non-commodified spaces for belonging.

It is vulnerable to say, “Come to this space, and I ask nothing of you except to be.” What stops people from hosting gatherings like Fire Salons are often the quiet, untrue voices that rise up inside:

“Only certain people can host spaces like this.”“I’m afraid no one will come, or worse, they will come and hate it.”“I don’t know what I would even talk about.”

The truth that we at OODW will continue shouting from the rooftops is that each of us carries a deep well of wisdom. We hold the stories of the people who raised us. We carry the practices of our grandparents, our friends, our lineages, the rituals that help us feel held, known, and connected to the earth. We know what it feels like to be heard and to be loved. And we can offer that to others.

When I began hosting more public soulful events, unsure if anyone would show up, my friend Dori offered two wise pieces of advice that I carry with me every time I host: 

1. “Silence is God’s first language.” and 

2. “Wherever two or more are gathered is holy space.”

Over the years, I’ve learned that the size of the group doesn’t determine its depth. Some weeks half the circle couldn’t make it, and the smaller gatherings were just as meaningful, sometimes even more so. One practice that has sustained me is making sure at least two friends can join me and co-lead. It can be as simple as saying, “If I cook this time, could you bring a reading or a poem to share?” Offering people a chance to lead goes a long way. And doing everything alone is not a soulful strategy.

So I ask you: What is the dream that’s dreaming you? What soulful practice or soulful community are you longing for or longing to create?

This is my invitation, friend: host your own Fire Salon. Or maybe your gathering has a different name, a different rhythm, a different flavor. What I know is that people are longing for more spaces to deepen together, to make sense of this life, to be known.

May this story of our Fire Salons, and the resources from Our Own Deep Wells be a gentle nudge toward seeking and creating the spaces your soul longs for. 

To my Fire Salon friends, from Cambridge to DC to the visitors who came to the fire’s warmth throughout the years: thank you. May your own fires burn brightly and wrap your communities in warmth and protection for the days ahead. I miss you dearly.

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