Rev. Ellen Alston
A candle wick with dancing flame can focus my sight and thinking. For these few moments, all other reality pales and melts away at the edge of my spirit’s peripheral vision. My senses fill with light, heat, “rainwater” aroma, the pungent taste of struck-match sulphur, and a stillness punctuated by crackles and palpable silence. My breath deepens and slows.
“I’m lighting a candle for you,” a friend says, and these simple words, like a laser beam, pierce and connect layers of memory and meaning:
-Candles I’ve seen burning in the holiest of times and places: sparks that mark a moment or a sense of momentum.
-The primal pull to gather up and circle around a lively flame, singing “rounds” and leaning into syncopating tunes and telling of the Story, while flickering lights and playful shadows prance and glance on each face and being.
-The Advent wreath: devotional center for hearth and home – teaching and reaching for the practice of waiting and watching and trusting God’s life and leading that are well ahead of us, but never apart from us.
-My earliest role of leadership in the church: to process with “the Light of Christ” from the back of the sanctuary to the altar at the front, where burn the pillars of timeless tradition and promise in Christ, reminding us of who we are and how we are sent to bear that Light for the world as we depart to serve.
And my favorite… the transformative, down-to-the-molecular-level chemical reaction and inside-out change wrought in and through the tongues of fire. Hovering, slightly and surely tethered to the earth by a single waxen cord, yet rising and aspiring to stand bright and tall, how like my heart and mind is that attentive flame!
Spirit of the Living God, purify my thoughts and motivations, even my prayers, as I am consumed and forever made new by your Love! AMEN.
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