Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.
~Anne Frank
Slowly, ever so slowly our house is being readied for Christmas. Our tree went up last week and one of my favorite moments of the day is when I walk over and press my foot against the button which will bring this tree into its fully lighted self. I try to do this without turning on any other lights in the house. This allows its ever-green presence to be center stage. As if a seven foot tree placed in a room does not already occupy that identity! But I do love the moment when darkness draws my vision toward the tiny, twinkling lights that adorn the tree. It never fails to fill me with a sense of magic.
Last night I sat with a friend in a darkened St. Paul restaurant. The mood was illuminated by the same small, white lights that dress our tree. Candles on each table flickered a pale yellow light making everyone’s face soft, dreamy, beautiful. Candlelight, a flame’s fire can do that. It can take even the most weary, beleaguered face and make it that of an angel. Don’t you think so? Try it sometime.
Though the light of electricity has replaced candlelight, we are people meant to sit around fires, to allow the glow to wash away the grime of worry and toil of whatever life has handed our way. Last week my husband and I took our walk later in the evening rather than in the morning. We took a different path than usual and were busy solving the world’s problems or those of our respective work places as is our custom. Turning a corner which sent us along the backyards of neighborhood homes, we came upon a man bundled up in his winter gear. He sat on a stump of wood which faced a blazing fire. Nearby were other empty stumps ringing the blaze. His face glowed a bright red in the dark of night, the brilliance of fire. He was intent on watching the dancing flames. I wondered what his day might have held.
“I want to go sit with him.”, I said. Being the voice of reason my husband cautioned against it. There was a fence after all. And we did not know this man. Who knows what he would think if a strange woman hopped the fence and just joined him in his watching, his meditation upon fire? He might not understand that I saw his fire as an invitation to join in all the fires that have been lit throughout time. Fires to warm the body and clear the mind. Fires around which stories were shared and meaning was made. Fires to cook food and ward off warriors. Fires for dancing and singing around. Fires that reminded the humans of their power to create and also destroy.
Fires defy darkness but also define it as Anne Frank points out. This light and dark is at all times in a constant dance. If we are attentive, we can experience the holiness that lives and breathes in both.
How is the darkness defining you these Advent days? What light are your longing to see? What fire calls to you? What fire burns within you? The early Christian household talked of ‘tongues of fire’ dancing over their heads when they felt the Spirit’s movement. May this day bring an experience of fire to each of us. And may we know it as holy.
