lighting candles
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than curse the darkness and
her glow has warmed the world.
~Adlai E. Stevenson
This image of my daughter with the quote beneath was the holiday card I sent out in 2001, I believe the last year I engaged in such a ritual. I was clearing out drawers recently when I came across it. Hard to believe it’s been over five years since I took that photograph. Certainly not my best work, and in retrospect kind of an odd choice of quotes for a holiday greeting. But still I propped the newly found card on my nightstand and have been looking at it for a few days now, contemplating the passing of time, what the quote meant to me back then……and what it means to me now.
More and more I’m understanding that life is a process of continually being prompted to let go. At times this feels punishing and as if God–spirit–the universe or whatever label we put on that which is larger than us, isn’t at all compassionate and caring. It can cause us to become cynical and bitter. It can feel as if we’re truly alone in the dark. But Theodore Roethke wrote: “In a dark time, the eye begins to see”, and I would have to agree. When plunged into the darkness we always have a choice. We can curse this darkness and the circumstances that led us there, or we can light candles and discover a new way of seeing.
It seems that most of the pain we experience in life is resistance to letting go. Of course it’s natural to want to hold on to someone or something we’ve loved and cherished, or a belief we‘ve long deemed true. Our human-ness, which sees us as separate from all things, believes we must. It’s a tough lesson to trust that the descent into darkness can ultimately leads us toward something precious and unbreakable: our own inner light and the understanding that at our core we truly are one energy.
Various religions assign different meaning to the lighting of candles. In my mind, the flame we nurture is metaphorical of the light burning inside each of our souls. It is *that* light that I believe has the capacity to warm the world…….to heal the world even.
~Cynthia
