A Little Light — But What a Light!

 It seems like such a little act:  lighting a candle.  But I have discovered in that act much to meditate upon.

As the year heads into its last few months, more tiny flames are lit around the world as particular religious festivals arrive:  Diwali, Hanukah, Christmas, even the newcomer Kwanza.  All these celebrations light candles in some form as part of their ceremonies.  Sometimes the wicks being lit are at the tip of hard candles; sometimes in a tiny cup of liquid.  But the visual effect is the same.  And it is beautiful.

In the northern hemisphere, the lighting of candles on those holidays late in the year carries an added spiritual meaning through the warmth the candles bring in cold weather.  But even when those religious holidays are practiced in the southern hemisphere, with days getting longer, candle lights can bring a soft yellow glow to what was darkness.  Although I am not a Roman Catholic, I have (as long as I can remember) found pleasing any pictures of Catholics lighting candles in a sometimes dim sanctuary, often accompanied by private prayers.

Before electricity came to our modern world, candles were used where today we use tiny light bulbs.  I feel nervous when I see pictures of some Europeans lighting candles on the branches of evergreen Christmas trees.  And I know the firefighters at my local fire-department can sleep easier knowing that electric lights decorate our trees in the U.S.  But we still desire to light candles in other ways during these festive months.

Before our petroleum age, the material for candles was wax from bees or tallow from sheep or cattle.  We might do well to recognize the flame as also being a gift from Nature.

Scientists who work in the area of evolutionary psychology try to project their thoughts back upon the path of human evolution.  Certainly a significant step in that story would have been being able to start a fire.  The European cultural heritage expresses how momentous that discovery was with its mythological story of Prometheus, who steals fire from the gods.  In the playwright Aeschylus's adaptation Prometheus Bound, Prometheus is also viewed as being the bringer of civilization.  But the god Zeus knew all too well how dangerous humans could be without bounds.  And so, Prometheus is bound to a rocky mountain as punishment.

That danger of possessing fire is why my reflections upon candle-lighting have led me to see it as an example of behaving in a restrained, respectful manner.  In humankind's use of candles, we have found a way to handle fire in a controlled way. If in mythology fire brings civilization, can lighting a candle be a civilizing act today?  In our religious and spiritual lighting of candles, can we—instead of fanning the flames of anger in ourselves and others—turn our hearts toward worship?

The commonality across faith-traditions of lighting candles (whether in sticks or cups of liquid) might enable us to share in the emotions of Howard Thurman, even if our faith-tradition is non-Christian, or if we have none.  He writes in part:

"I Will Light Candles This Christmas.

Candles of joy despite all sadness,

Candles of hope where despair keeps watch,

Candles of courage for fears ever present,

Candles of peace for tempest-tossed days,

Candles of grace to ease heavy burdens."

~ ~ ~

Do you light candles on particular occasions?  When?  What feelings does it bring?

(The lines from "Candles for Christmas" by Howard Thurman are from Meditations of the Heart, © 1953, used under Fair Use.)
(The painting of Prometheus by Jan Cossiers is in the Public Domain.)

Of Campfires and Stars

Even before there was writing, humans gathered around fires.
And even before there was writing, humans told stories.  As those ancient humans sat around fires at night, telling stories, they would have noticed some of the sparks from the fire ascending against the darkness of the night sky.  As their eyes followed those sparks upward, some of those sparks would have seemed to almost merge with their cousins -- the stars.  And as those humans looked upward and told stories, some of those random stars became transformed into constellations. They saw animals and legendary heroes there:  A bear.  A scorpion.  Orion.  And thus, the cosmic dome became part of the narratives about human lives.

Today, the idealized campfire is a symbol of belonging and peace.  It is a place where we hope people will come together to find belonging and a warmth of spirit.

The literary analyst Harold Bloom provided a revealing analysis of the connection between fire and belonging in one narrative in the Bible's book of Luke (22:54-62).  After Jesus is arrested, his disciple Peter flees into the darkness of the night.  Peter is alone and cut off in the coldness of the night.  But then he notices a fire burning in the distance.  On many occasions in the past, Peter's companions and Jesus spent time around such fires at night, sharing stories.  And so, the lonely Peter is drawn towards this new fire, around which people are huddled.  But when Peter draws closer to this fire, his face becomes illuminated, and so he is recognized as being a disciple of Jesus, the identity which he had been trying to conceal.  Peter and the strangers around the fire have not felt their common humanity.  And Peter flees back into the darkness of the cold night.

There is a larger way the sense of belonging can become lost.  Jeffrey Sobosan recounts an incident involving a mentor of his, "an old priest who had .... contributed brilliantly to his own specialty in theology, and now at the close of life had given himself over to what he once described as his first love, the study of the stars."  Sobosan continues:

"I met him in a garden one evening, where he sat by his beloved telescope...
with a look of ineffable sadness in his eyes.... He spoke of the beauty of the universe...
but in striving after this beauty,... his mind had taken a savage turn ...
toward the damning conclusion: the universe is void of meaning."

The vast cosmos had, for him, become alien.

It is not hard to understand why Sobosan's mentor-priest felt himself betrayed by the cosmos, which he had hoped would provide him a comforting beauty with its views though the telescope.  Even though telescopes have revealed much more of this vast universe, the view through a telescope is a narrowing of our immediate field of vision. It is somewhat like trying to view an ocean through a ship's small porthole.  As the philosopher Max Oelschlaeger explains, using Galileo as an example:

"By using the telescope, Galileo’s eyes gathered additional light,
and the telescopic image itself was magnified....
What he lost was the sweeping field of view of the naked eye astronomy....
And perhaps, in his intense concentration, he lost also the sounds and smells of the night
and the awareness of himself as a conscious man beholding
a grand and mysterious stellar spectacle."

A sweeping field of vision can encompass both those stars and ourselves in one grand narrative.  And that narrative can give us a sense of universal belonging -- provided we remember our common humanity as part of that domed narrative.  The story-telling circle must become wider than the ring around our particular campfire.

~ ~ ~

(Do you have any recollection of being around a campfire in a way that increased your sense of belonging?  When was it?  What was it like?)

(The Sobosan quotation is from his Romancing the Universe: Theology, Science, and Cosmology. © 1999. p. 1.)

(The Oelschlaeger quotation if from his The Idea of Wilderness. © 1991. p. 78.)

A Little Light — But What a Light!

It seems like such a little act:  lighting a candle.  But I have discovered in that act much to meditate upon.

As the year heads into its last few months, more tiny flames are lit around the world as particular religious festivals arrive:  Diwali, Hanukah, Christmas, even the newcomer Kwanza.  All these celebrations light candles in some form as part of their ceremonies.  Sometimes the wicks being lit are at the tip of hard candles; sometimes in a tiny cup of liquid.  But the visual effect is the same.  And it is beautiful.

In the northern hemisphere, the lighting of candles on those holidays late in the year carries an added spiritual meaning through the warmth the candles bring in cold weather.  But even when those religious holidays are practiced in the southern hemisphere, with days getting longer, candle lights can bring a soft yellow glow to what was darkness.  Although I am not a Roman Catholic, I have (as long as I can remember) found pleasing any pictures of Catholics lighting candles in a sometimes dim sanctuary, often accompanied by private prayers.

Before electricity came to our modern world, candles were used where today we use tiny light bulbs.  I feel nervous when I see pictures of some Europeans lighting candles on the branches of evergreen Christmas trees.  And I know the firefighters at my local fire-department can sleep easier knowing that electric lights decorate our trees in the U.S.  But we still desire to light candles in other ways during these festive months.

Before our petroleum age, the material for candles was wax from bees or tallow from sheep or cattle.  We might do well to recognize the flame as also being a gift from Nature.

Scientists who work in the area of evolutionary psychology try to project their thoughts back upon the path of human evolution.  Certainly a significant step in that story would have been being able to start a fire.  The European cultural heritage expresses how momentous that discovery was with its mythological story of Prometheus, who steals fire from the gods.  In the playwright Aeschylus's adaptation Prometheus Bound, Prometheus is also viewed as being the bringer of civilization.  But the god Zeus knew all too well how dangerous humans could be without bounds.  And so, Prometheus is bound to a rocky mountain as punishment.

That danger of possessing fire is why my reflections upon candle-lighting have led me to see it as an example of behaving in a restrained, respectful manner.  In humankind's use of candles, we have found a way to handle fire in a controlled way. If in mythology fire brings civilization, can lighting a candle be a civilizing act today?  In our religious and spiritual lighting of candles, can we—instead of fanning the flames of anger in ourselves and others—turn our hearts toward worship?

The commonality across faith-traditions of lighting candles (whether in sticks or cups of liquid) might enable us to share in the emotions of Howard Thurman, even if our faith-tradition is non-Christian, or if we have none.  He writes in part:

"I Will Light Candles This Christmas.

Candles of joy despite all sadness,

Candles of hope where despair keeps watch,

Candles of courage for fears ever present,

Candles of peace for tempest-tossed days,

Candles of grace to ease heavy burdens."

~ ~ ~

Do you light candles on particular occasions?  When?  What feelings does it bring?

(The lines from "Candles for Christmas" by Howard Thurman are from Meditations of the Heart, © 1953, used under Fair Use.)
(The painting of Prometheus by Jan Cossiers is in the Public Domain.)

A Fiery Paradoxical Mystery

In his "Canticle of Brother Sun," St. Francis of Assisi uses a series of verses with very similar wording to celebrate one by one each part of the natural world.  Each part -- moon, air, water, and so forth -- is celebrated as both praising God and being a means by which we join Nature in praise.

There is one part of the natural world, however, that is singled out by St. Francis as being most like God, and it is surprising:  Francis singles out the sun.  When speaking to God about the sun, Francis says, "Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness."

Somehow it seems to smack of sun worship!  Wasn't I taught in church-school how the ancient Israelites in the Bible took pains to differentiate their concept of God from the beliefs of the other ancient cultures that worshipped a planet or the sun?  So why does Francis say that of all the things in the natural world God is most like the sun?  We, today, in most mainstream Christianity are more likely to prefer that God be likened to something more close at hand than the sun, and something less likely to burn us.  It's more comforting to think of God as being like a gentle breeze, or a good friend.

Francis's own statement that the sun "brings the day" shows that he found a similarity to God's faithfulness in the sun's faithful rising every morning.  Francis also says that it is through the sun that God provides us light. However, another clue as to how God might by like the sun might be found later in the "Canticle" where Francis says of "Brother Fire" that fire too not only brings light but is also "full of power and strength."  Light and warmth but also power -- some of the same properties held by the fiery sun.

So here is a paradox which might speak even more closely to the similarity between the sun and the great Divine Mystery we call God, who we never see:  We receive light and warmth from the sun, but we could never touch the sun itself, much less enter its fiery core, without being consumed.  Similarly, I can find intimations of God here on Earth, but how could my mind ever fully grasp what kind of power it can be that can make possible all of the 170-billion galaxies, with an average of 100-billion stars in each galaxy?  My mind would be completely overwhelmed, consumed.

In 1654, the Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal experienced for about two hours one of those mystical experiences in which a veil is lifted and the Divine Mystery is experienced extraordinarily directly.  For the remainder of his life, Pascal carried with him a piece of paper on which he had written a description of his experience of God.  It's words in part were:

"In the year of Grace 1654, on Monday 23rd November...

From about half past ten at night until about half-past twelve.

FIRE.

... Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy."

~~~

What to you most strongly proclaims the greatness of the world we live in?

(The Pascal quote is taken from An Anthology of Christian Mysticism, by Harvey D. Egan, © 1991.  p. 482.)

(The photo of artwork, by Frank Vincentz,

 is used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)

(One translation of St. Francis's "Canticle" can be read at this external link: "Canticle.")