No Small Moments - August 2, 2026

No Small Moments

Okanagan Lake, August 3^rd, 2026

“It Only Takes a Spark”

©Hubcatstide2026

It is 6 am. My puppy, Ruby, is snoring beside me with one paw touching me – ALWAYS that one paw touching me, making sure I haven’t left. I can feel the light of a new day on my face and my breath, well, you don’t want to know. I went to bed with this picture seared into my energy…

I took this picture from my living room window that overlooks Lake Okanagan. The West Shores, La Casa, Killiney Beach, Quitpituk Creek, Bradley Creek are on fire, along with Spokane, Spain, France…basically our entire earth is erupting for various reasons. We have all witnessed the horrific images of orange, red, and yellow flames dancing in the wind as they billow an uncontrollable tango in our skies. We continue to listen to the heart wrenching stories of evacuations, charred dreams and losses. Fire impacts every human sense…smell (heavy air, torching our lungs with debris), touch (radiant heat, consumed, blistered), taste (dry char, burnt land), hearing (crackling, snapping), sight (dancing, licking), and it penetrates our sixth sense spiritual refining, or burning away the chaff that separates us from ourselves, others, and love. Fire is moody and requires wind and space to grow – to expand – to create and leave a legacy history will remember. However, history will also record the role of irresponsible and often self-centered behavior in human consumption and neglect will continue as far as the east is to the west.

The idea of fire in our souls, in our being, speaks to the illumination in our ability to spiritually see, comprehend, and perceive the constant movement and guidance of the Spirit – the Energy of the Cosmos in our lives. Last week, my daughter asked me, “How do you know when you are in love?” I thought about her question for a while and answered, “I experience an inner knowing…almost like a burning within…a warm gentle and sometimes soul fathoms of a deep spiritual gravity that speaks without language.” The spark of the Divine is not an attraction. I am not smitten with the Sacred, nor am I enamored or infatuated. I am constantly drawn like water to the Spirit, compelled to drink from her well of all LOVE is. I understand God to be the Lover of my soul. Richard Rohr calls us to remember the Creation Story telling us that after creating each day, the Creator said, “It is good.” We have been created human, and it is good, not sin. Our souls are physically born and we are good. Our problem is not the human created doctrine that we are born into sin. Our problem is that we have forgotten who we are and who exists in the spark within us. God-breathed life – light – love so deeply into our souls before we became human and that life, light, and love was infused into our marrow, our cells, our blood, bones, into each living moving breathing together atoms and neurons living beneath our biggest human organ, our skin. We observe, listen, taste, touch, grow and experience the joys and sorrows of being human, and along the way, we become afraid, protective, and leery of feeling joy and love too deeply because heaven surely knows impermanence is very real in the physical realm.

What happens? We allow ourselves, others, and the weight of uncertainty to dim our light, cool our inner fire, disconnecting us from our eternal Lover.

“Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me.” We may as well cross stitch that little fear monger onto our sleeping pillows.

Life can be painful. Sometimes being human will be painful, especially when something changes and it pierces our hearts. Change is demanding because it is constant and survival depends on the flow of change so life can continue to flourish in new life-giving ways. Evolution does not spin on a dime. Evolution breathes, adapts, and transforms by leaving unnecessary things and ways of thinking and being that are no longer viable behind so new thought, a deeper consciousness can take hold. Some call this enlightenment. Some call it a soul on fire…a soul lit up by being abandoned to and deeply connected in its spiritual umbilical source, ETERNAL LOVE and LIGHT.

I want the warmth of the fire of the Spirit to seep out of me like living water moves in Lake Okanagan. I desire to be guided by the warmth of the Spirit’s wooing that feels like “Look this way, not that way, leave here and go there, let that go…I am doing something new…do you want to be a part of it…will you accept my invitation…will you come and follow me…trust me as we move together kind of living experience.” Living this way will never burn us, but it will melt away what we no longer need and expose…light the ways we need to grow and become. I don’t want to be a human epitaph or resume of what I have done. I want to be a colorful light that sparks love and light until my last breath, and I begin again in a new way.

This year, especially this Fall, we will be contemplating how to reimagine, rethink, and remodel who we are, both personally and in community. As destructive fires continue to burn around us while our courageous fire fighters work to extinguish every spark, I leave us with these personal questions: “Do I believe the spark of Divine Love is real?” If we answer yes, then we must answer another question, “Am I afraid to catch on fire with LOVE’s ways of being for the highest good of all?”

I want my legacy to say, “She was full of sweet, courageous and contagious fire that drew us in to drink living water.” And, if you want to add, “She was hilarious too, I’ll take it. I mean, if the shoe fits, right?” May the smoke of the Holy ignite our senses and burn in our hearts and eyes so we may see how to live…how to perceive what matters the most…so we can brand the heart of LOVE into our lives, Lake Country and Earth. Folks, the truth is, like our planet on fire, we all need divine and human tenderness, and it only takes a spark to get that healing fire going.

There are no small moments.

Traci Hubbard