The Sufi tradition offers many teaching stories. Passed on orally from teacher to disciple for hundreds if not thousands of years, these stories present points to ponder and offer insights on how people function. Idries Shah collected and published some of these stories in Tales of the Dervishes. This is the collection where I first read The Story of Fire.
To summarize the story, Nour discovers how to make fire. He travels around and teaches many groups the skill, but eventually is killed by a group that is scared by his ability. Several centuries later, a teacher and his disciples visit with the same groups and notice how each has retained portions of what Nour taught.
By looking at the different groups and their relationship with fire, I believe this short four-page story can provide hours of commentary and discussion on our views of learning, community, and personal relationships. These are the topics I plan to explore here. What lessons can we learn today from The Story of Fire? How does this tale from several hundred years ago apply to our lives today?