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The Body, Burning Flame is a red-hot vapor, fume, or exhalation–– For flaming bodies emit fumes that burn in the flame. —Sir Isaac Newton Opticks, Book III, Part 1 Let us speak of cases. The woman who spontaneously ignites at the Fenwick Apartments, air filled with smoke, walls thick with soot, radio playing static across the angles of the courtyard. Or those lovers running from a London flat, arms raised and bodies aflame, bits of scorched cloth fluttering in their wake. Among the exotica, the police found no accelerant. And what of the carnival man, an “intemperate drinker of drams,” smoldering in a filthy bed, “Dead,” the priest decrees, “by visitation of God”? 67 For Newton, fire is the body. For Bonaventure it’s the soul, burning on its journey into God. A line is crossed and when the moment comes who can stand against it? The body gradually lessened, dreamed into grace, laying out what is needed for another life. What does the body want? To be a crucible, says the body. The seraphim, these six-winged angels fanning the body to flames, the rapture. This passage into Jerusalem. 68 ...

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