Jan Carlsson-Bull November 28, 1999
"This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.
This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine."
For so many of us, these lyrics link memory and passion. They resound in my own history, from the steps of my childhood church, where I belted them out in summer Bible School, to the concrete canyons of this metropolis, where I have joined others, marching to the rhythms of verse after verse in myriad political protests. Kindled in the tempestuous earth of our African-American history, these words sound across the centuries. They remind us that we can make a difference, impassioned by the light that shines through each of us, fragile and strong.
Light is fragile and strong. We worship this morning at the threshold of a season resplendent with holidays of light. ....light whose time-ripened patterns play on surfaces of lesser light. Our voices blended earlier in an expectant carol of harvest's haze drifting "along the field," of "moon skies...wide and deep" and will rise soon to the meditative strains of "Silent night, holy night. All is calm; all is bright" and to the sheer jubilance of "Joy to the world." Our moods drift from pensive and ponderous to eager and exuberant.
It is the spirit of the season. In gathering together, we find ourselves in solitude. In worshipful solitude and communion, the arms of our hearts reach out expectantly. All the while the creatures of our parks and woodlands have their own agenda. They are bustling about in a mode of seasonal expectancy. As the earth prepares its nests, our souls keep vigil. Anything can happen.
Our Christian memories tell us that today is the first day of Advent. Advent; an approach; a drawing near. We are moving toward the holiday that commemorates the birth of Jesus, whom millions revere as the light of the world, as proclaimed by the prophet Isaiah:
"The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; on those who lived in a land as dark as death a light has dawned." (Isaiah 9:2)
Dawn awakens seasonal hope, messianic imagination, and the custom of candles nestled in a wreath, Advent candles. This practice of placing candles in a wreath of pine boughs came to us from pre-Christian Europe, where it was repeated annually as a rite of hope that days would once again grow long and the earth would once more become verdant. Christians continue this custom as a ritual of anticipation for the birth of the Christ child, born in humble circumstances yet under a star. Four candles fill the advent wreath; one is lit on each Sunday preceding Christmas, with all four aglow on the fourth Sunday.
Variations abound, such as Saint Lucia Day, celebrated on December 13 in Sweden. Young girls process with candles placed in wreaths on their hair in honor of Lucia, a young Italian girl martyred for her Christian faith early in the first millennium of the Common Era. Now, I would not suggest placing candles in your hair, anymore than I would suggest pondering too long the matter of how an Italian saint came to be honored throughout this Scandinavian and primarily Lutheran country. Nor would I suggest adorning your Christmas trees with real candles, as was the custom that was so widespread only a few decades ago. The Christmas tree itself is an heir of our ancestors' need to craft a harbinger of seasonal dawn. Arrayed with candle-like lights, it both invokes memory and draws us into the magic of the moment.
Our Jewish memories tell us that Hanukkah begins this week. Many of us have menorahs, or Hanukkah lampstands, in our homes. Each night of this holiday of eight nights, we lift the candle known as the shammash, the servant candle, to light one candle a night until all eight candles and the shammash are burning bright, reminding us of an ancient miracle of lights.
Hanukkah means "dedication" and refers to the rededication of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem after Judah and his fellow warriors, the Maccabees, triumphed over their oppressors almost 2,200 years ago. A scant portion of oil had been rescued from the original temple, only enough to burn for a single day. Yet when the Jews began their celebration and kindled this oil, it lasted eight days. It was this miracle of lights that led Judah to proclaim a holiday to be celebrated "with mirth and gladness for all time to come." (Chaikin, Light Another Candle, 1981)
Hanukkah was originally called the Festival of Lights and was termed Hanukkah only after a conclave of rabbis decided that the religious meaning of these days--the rededication of the temple--must be inscribed in historical memory as the very name of this celebration. Yet the kindling of lights was so central to Hanukkah that the 12th century philosopher, Maimonides declared: "Even if a person has no food to eat but what he receives from charity, he should beg, or else sell an item of clothing, in order to have the wherewithal to buy oil and a lamp." (Chaikin)
Through the centuries, our Jewish memories have called us to light the menorah, no matter how trying the circumstances. In a cramped garret in Holland, a young girl wrote in her diary on December 7, 1942. "'We just gave each other a few little presents and then we lit the candles. Because of the shortage of candles, we only had them alight for ten minutes.'" Only a few pages away, Anne Frank penned her credo: ""Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart."
Lighting a candle in a community of faith is an act of hope and affirmation for all who know oppression.
Our African-American memories tell us that Kwanzaa, emerging fully as a holiday in 1966, is celebrated at the end of December, from December 26 through January 1. Kwanzaa is Swahili for "first fruits of the harvest." The symbols and principles of Kwanzaa emerge from the struggles of African-American people. In a candle-holder called the Kinara, seven candles are lit over the span of the seven days symbolizing the principles of Kwanzaa, principles by which we might relate to one another and live our lives according to our own choices. The center candle is black, a celebration of the beauty of African-American skin. Three candles are red, reminiscent of the blood of our ancestors and continuing struggle. Three are green, anticipating a future in which we will have our rightful share of land and life. As each candle is lit, we are reminded, one candle at a time, of the principles at the heart of Kwanzaa: Unity, Self-Determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity, and Faith.
Faith is a candle, whose flame both fragile and strong, mirrors our struggles, our hopes, our dreams. "The flame is a valiant and fragile verticality," observes the 20th century French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard.
"A breath disturbs it, but it rights itself. Ascensional force reasserts its own prestige....
Everyone who dreams of a flame knows that the flame is alive....One...who learns the lesson of the flame...rediscovers the will to burn high, to go with all [possible] strength to the summit of fervor."
Summits and fervor come to mind when I envision a nation whose holiday of lights burns as brightly as any I know. India is a land of countless extremes. Its population surpasses one billion. Its topography descends from the Himalayas in the north to the monsoon-wracked coastlands of the south. While 30% of its people speak Hindi, 24 languages are each spoken by a million or more, and there are countless dialects. India is an intensely religious country. Four out of five Indians are Hindu; a daunting array of other religions are practiced by the other 200 million. There is even a Unitarian Universalist presence!
Diwali is a festival that ignites and unites this land of extremes. On the last day of the final month of the lunar calendar the lights of Diwali shine in such abundance that India seems to burn as if kindled by one flame. Diwali is short for Deepawali, the Festival of Lights. In Hinduism, light signifies goodness, as it does in so many faiths; Diwali celebrates the triumph of light over darkness, of good over evil, and heralds the beginning of a new year. For each of five days, Hindu families fill their homes with oil lamps or candles, exchange gifts, and don new and colorful garments. Each part of India seems to have its own ancient myth linked with this festival, with hundreds of millions celebrating the harvest and the end of the monsoon. Every god and goddess in the Hindu pantheon has a role to play somewhere in India during the days of Diwali. Lamps or candles are lit by all.
There is a time for light and a time to refrain from light. Only a few days from now, we will commemorate the lives of thousands of women, men, and children lost to AIDS. December 1st is World AIDS Day. It's not a holiday, but a time out to remember the magnitude of our loss and that the epidemic surges on. The night of December 1st is widely observed as Night Without Light. Homes, businesses, even the Empire State Building's luminous red and green, go dark, like so many lives snuffed out. We remember, and in remembering, we hope for a cure. Surely there is a dawn.
Candles burn bright in hearts and homes across the centuries, across the millennia, of holidays celebrated during this season by humankind. The lights of Advent, of Christmas, of Hanukkah, of Kwanzaa, of Diwali, and the lights of those loved and lost, glow in such abundance, they seem to mirror the night sky, calling to mind the words of the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. Perhaps as a gift for all these holidays, he gave us this poem. In its full measure it reads:
"Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in its hand with a grip that kills it. Wishing to hearten a timid lamp great night lights all her stars."
Starlight and candlelight invoke our dreams, our wonder, our presence across all time and in the moment. The flame is singular and compelling.
"Of all the objects in the world that invoke reverie," Bachelard muses, "a flame calls forth images more readily than any other. It compels us to imagine....
It compels us to look. The flame summons us to see for the first time."
The flame is strong and fragile. It flares up with bravado; yet its very being hangs on the steadiness of its own consumption. Bachelard goes further:
"...the stem of the flame is so straight and so frail that the flame is a flower....each flower has its own light. Every flower is a dawn."
This morning we dedicated Blythe Brooke Logan. Blythe is seeing this world for the first time; watching her, enchanted by her, we see our world as if for the first time. Like a young flame, she is filled with her own bold energy. Yet she is fragile, trusting and needing the full attentiveness of her parents and the larger community on which they depend. With a flower we dedicated her, a flower that holds its own light, its own dawn, just as Blythe holds her own light, a dawn in our midst. And we dedicate Blythe and all our children in the setting of worship.
"Worship [as] the kindred fire within our hearts; [moving] through deeds of kindness and through acts of love.
Worship [as] the mystery within us reaching out to the mystery beyond... [as] the window of the moment open to the sky of the eternal."
Worship as the kindred fire in our hearts, fire as the strength and fragility of a flower, of a child dedicated in the name of God and the name of Love. All coalesce in the flaming chalice, the symbol of our larger community of faith. The chalice and the flame, both common images of faith, were constellated into a specifically Unitarian symbol by an Austrian artist, Hans Deutsch. Deutsch had fled Austria for Portugal in 1940. As a cartoonist critical of Hitler, his life was in danger. In Portugal, he met Reverend Charles Joy, Executive Director of the startup Unitarian Service Committee--now the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, for which many of us in this congregation are now filling our "Guest At Your Table" boxes.
Deutsch joined the Service Committee, and, like Joy and others, risked his life to save hundreds of Jews from the ravages of Nazism. Deutsch was soon called upon to design the logo of the Service Committee. The flaming chalice was the result of his efforts and has become the symbol of both the Service Committee and Unitarian Universalism. I trust that Deutsch and Joy would take heart at the description of the chalice offered by one of my own children when she was only a few years older than Blythe now is. "That steaming pot of fire," she called it.
So many candles, so many flames. In solitude, the arms of our hearts reach out in expectant communion, touching the kindred fire within our souls, knowing light for the first time. As the earth prepares its nests, we light our candles and keep vigil. Anything can happen. Carpe lucem. Carpe diem. Amen. Copyright AllSouls 1999.