What Is Your Candle?

Mark Stringer

First Unitarian Church of Des Moines

12/02/01

 

Children’s Focus

Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, it is time to return to the stories of Christmas. This story takes place about twenty years ago.  But it could just as easily happen this year.  It is the story of a boy named...Mark.  Mark's family celebrated Christmas by exchanging presents.  Mark loved exchanging presents.  Especially this year because he really, really wanted a certain present.  A present he had seen on TV.  A present he had seen in the big Christmas catalog that he had been reading since the summer.  He wanted a toy called "Merlin."  Merlin was one of the first electronic games of its day.  Kind of like a prehistoric Game Boy.  Mark knew it would be the coolest Christmas present he had ever gotten.

 

A few weeks before Christmas, Mark's mom asked him to go up into the attic to get a box of decorations.  As he searched for the right box, he noticed a bag from the local toy store.  He knew he shouldn't look in it.  His mother had told him not to go snooping around.  But he just had to see if his present was there.  He just had to see if Merlin was there.  "Well," he thought to himself, "if the bag opens on accident and I accidentally see what's inside, I won't really be snooping."  He gently pushed at the bag with his foot.  No luck.  He knelt down and brushed his elbow against the bag a few times.  Still no luck.  He realized that he could make out a few of the words on the boxes through the plastic. He spread the bag tight against the boxes inside, his heart beating fast now.   Almost instantly he beheld the name of his treasured, hoped-for gift:  MERLIN. 

 

"I got it," he told himself quietly, not quite as excited as he imagined he would be.  His heart began to sink.  Now he knew what he was getting.  There would be no surprise on Christmas day.  Suddenly, Merlin didn't seem quite so cool anymore.  Maybe he should have just waited after all.  As the days passed moving ever-closer to Christmas, Mark didn't get to share in his brother and sister's excitement.  After all, he knew what he was getting.   On Christmas morning, he tried his best to act surprised but his mother knew something was wrong.  After all of the presents had been opened, she called him into kitchen.  "Mark, did you know that you were getting Merlin?"  "Yeah," he answered, embarrassed and ashamed.  "I saw it in the bag in the attic; I wish I hadn't looked.  It took the fun away."  His mother gave him a hug as she told him, "Sometimes the waiting is the best part, isn't it?"

Mark never looked for his Christmas presents again.

 

Meditation for 12/2/01

Creative Spirit, Spirit of Life, known by many names spoken and         unspoken.

How is it that we find ourselves to December already?

Just yesterday it seems we were basking in the glow of long summer         days. 

Now we are left to grasp for the few precious rays of sunlight left   in our waking hours. 

Ah, to have more time to ourselves to enjoy the streams of sunlight         now easily finding their way through the barren trees.

Many of us may not be ready for the holiday blitz now screaming         toward us. 

Particularly this year, when the stories of battles many miles away

are adding to the din of a world in turmoil.

The tension will grow as we try to live out our values in the midst         of a culture that encourages us to abandon them. 

The pressure will increase as we struggle to achieve some kind of         balance atop the shifting footing of a see-saw season of         responsibilities and expectations. 

May we find means to release our tension and pressure... 

Maybe as we gaze into the eyes of our children, seeing there the         magic of the season we may have forgotten,

or as we visit again with characters such as George Bailey,

who remind us each year how wonderful our lives can be,

or as we listen to the music of the season, hearing our own tension         and release mirrored in the melodies.

or as we retell the stories of miraculous births, surprised searchers,
        and a hope that does not,

                        will not,

                                  can not die.

May we each find a way to savor these holidays,

        these holy days,

                these precious days of our lives,

And may they work their magic on our tired souls.

Amen.

 

 

Reading

From UU minister Jane Rzepka:

 

It is Thanksgiving weekend, and I am at Logan airport meeting a plane.  Never do this.  As anybody could tell you:  You'll have to wait.

 

It is Thanksgiving weekend, and I am in a check-out line.  Never do this.  As anybody could tell you:  You'll have to wait.

 

It is Thanksgiving weekend, and I am on the phone on hold for catalogue sales.  Never do this.  As anybody could tell you:  You'll have to wait.

 

Advent has begun.  Advent means a wait.  Apparently a few people a long time ago savored the waiting, delighted in the anticiaption, enjoyed their time of longing expectancy.  These folks didn't just "wait"; they made something of it--they "awaited."  And so at the Council of Tours, in 567, they invented Advent, drawing heaviliy on the mood of the Hebrew scriptures.

 

Even now, at the darkest time of the year, we await some kind of triumph.  Certainly the Hebrews did: (from Malachi) "...the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings."  And the Christians, too: (from Romans) "...it is full time now for you to wake from sleep.  For salvation is nearer to us now then when we first believed..."

 

It's only Thanksgiving weekend, and already I am tired of waiting.  But awaiting--that's different.  The sun will shine stronger, justice will sometimes prevail, nearly all of us will smile again dozens of times and feel the warmth of love, and who knows--peace may be at hand.  Advent has begun, even for us.  Enjoy the wait.

 

 

Reading

“Christmas Eve” by Bill Watterson--from The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes

 

On window panes, the icy frost

leaves feathered patterns, crissed and crossed,

but in our house the Christmas tree

is decorated festively

with tiny dots of colored light

that cozy up this winter night.

Christmas songs, familiar, slow

play softly on the radio.

Pops and hisses from the fire

whistle with the bells and choir.

My tiger is now fast asleep

on his back and dreaming deep.

When the fire makes him hot,

he turns to warm whatever's not.

Propped against him on the rug,

I give my friend a gentle hug.

Tomorrow's what I'm waiting for,

but I can wait a little more.

 

Sermon

Can you believe we are in December already?  Every year it seems to appear without warning, bringing with it longer nights, changing weather and conflicting emotions.  Despite the hype, we have learned that December is often a time of impractical deadlines, impossible expectations, and challenging encounters.  It should not be surprising therefore when polls indicate that people most typically greet the holiday season with a sense of dread.  Though I hope to welcome the holidays this morning, I'm not going to pretend they are not a stressful time, or that if we just "relaxed" a little bit, we might feel better about it all.  I usually bristle at such messages this time of year.  You know the ones..."Just slow down and enjoy the season" as though all we needed to adjust ourselves to the holidays could be found in a cup of General Foods International Coffee or a hot bath with magical Christmas bubble beads. No, I am not here to convince you how much better everything would suddenly be if we added additional meditation or prayer time to our busy holiday schedules, or if we took a moment to sit peacefully each day, or if we dropped all of our seasonal responsibilities.  Nice ideas, but life just isn't like that.  Each of us is carrying a uniquely filled bag of seasonal joys and burdens that call for uniquely creative methods of care.  Who knows what will weigh us down this year? December may demand that we attend to our extended family in challenging ways.  Perhaps the over-emphasis our culture has placed on material goods will be the source of our seasonal stress.  And who could forget the regular stuff of life that may be bearing down, holidays or not?  The reality is that stress is often as much a part of the season as Jesus or Santa--that chaos can accompany Christmas just as much as candlelight--and we each have our ways of navigating ourselves through the season.  The best I can hope to do this morning is to offer up to you some of the things I've been considering as I try to be intentional about not only welcoming the season, but actually appreciating what it brings...stress and all. 

 

During the past few holiday seasons, I've felt the tension right up until the Christmas Eve candlelight service, when I've suddenly realized that the entire season has almost passed me by.  Typically the days leading up to that service have been filled with hurried searches for gifts, heavy self-induced guilt trips about all that I won't be able to accomplish, all the ways in which I will not live up to the holiday I had envisioned.  I usually feel a sense of remorse, too.  Remorse that another year has gone by without me being focused on the right things.  All those things I haven't done right.  All the people with whom I haven't been my best self.  All the cards I meant to send, all the people I meant to see, all the holiday spirit I meant to feel.... Perhaps Charlie Brown said it best: "Arrrrggggghhh!"

 

But there's something about the Christmas Eve service that slows me down, that pulls me out of my seasonal malaise just in time.  Maybe it's the stories of a miraculous birth, of people who went looking for a king and who found an infant instead.  But you know, I've heard those stories before.  Maybe it's the familiar music of the season, the soundtrack of Christmas memories that always fills the church on the 24th.  But you know, by Christmas Eve we've all heard that music...been bombarded by it from every possible angle for at least a month.  I think, for me at least, it might be the candles.   

 

I first began to realize the relationship of candles to the holidays when I served as an acolyte at the Methodist church of my youth.  It was a small church without many children my age, so I was chosen to be the candle-lighter for the entire month of December one year.  Each Sunday of the advent season, I would not only light the two tapers that were typically used on any given Sunday, but I would light the candles on the advent wreath as well.  Each week, another candle was lit, and the importance of my role, at least in my mind, grew.  I loved the theatre of it all.  Having the opportunity to play a part in this  weekly ritual of the church was very special to me.  (Do you note the foreshadowing of my current role?)  Participating in the weekly December ritual of candle-lighting taught me that the season was not about only Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  It was really a month-long celebration...a celebration of waiting...a celebration of ever-increasing light during the darkest time of the year.

 

Around this time, I began to notice my mother's personal recognition of the season.  She had constructed a mini-version of the advent wreath that I had seen at church, and on Sunday evenings during the month of December she would light the candles.  At the time, I didn't understand why she bothered.  Busy attending to her duties as family caretaker, she rarely had time to enjoy the candlelight for more than a minute or two.  But she lit the candles anyway.  I don't suppose the wreath itself mattered much.  After all, it was just plastic greenery covering a Styrofoam base.  I imagine there was something in the act of lighting the candles that encouraged her to continue the tradition each year.  There was something in the act of lighting the candles that made it worth the effort.  I think I'm beginning to understand why she bothered.

 

For me, the lighting of a special candle each week to mark one of the more stressful seasons of the year is a symbolic gesture of beauty and hope.  It is an acknowledgement that this season of darkness calls us to reflect on the ways in which our individual lights might provide needed illumination to those with whom we share this world.  It is a reminder that both the anticipation and anxiety we experience at this time of year are unavoidable aspects of the season, a several-week span when we are particularly challenged to be our best.  And it encourages us to share a moment of peace amidst that chaos that December can bring to our lives. 

 

It is easy to imagine that candles must have played an important role in early advent celebrations almost 1500 years ago—after all, Christmas itself was an appropriation of the day on which the Romans celebrated the winter solstice and birthday of the sun--a celebration that must have called for light.[1]  However, there is no record of candle rituals during Advent until Lutherans in Germany began using a wreath of evergreen branches holding four candles, each lit on successive weeks, to mark the Sundays of Advent. 

 

Of course, other cultures have utilized candles during their December festivals as well. The Jewish festival of lights known as Hanukkah features candles on the menorah.  Modern Irish families place a candle within a wreath of holly or laurel and burn it throughout the night leading up to Christmas.  Before electric lights made it possible to reduce the obvious fire hazard, candles were even used on the German tannenbaum, or Christmas tree.  A candleholder called a Kinara is featured in the Kwanzaa holiday, a modern December celebration developed by a professor of black studies in the sixties[2].  

 

So what is it about the candle that has called people to utilize its magic, regardless of the seasonal celebration?  The English physicist and chemist Michael Faraday, who presented a series of still-famous Christmas lectures at the Royal Institution in London titled “The Chemical History of the Candle”, pondered this question over 100 years ago.[3]  Though Faraday's lectures were based on the classical physics of his day and are therefore clearly outdated as we begin the 21st century, his embrace of the magic of candlelight gives a hint as to why the candle still holds ritual power.  He wrote, "You have the glittering beauty of gold and silver, and the still higher luster of jewels, like the ruby and diamond; but none of these rival the brilliancy and beauty of flame."[4]  Though Faraday's lectures mesmerized candle-watchers and budding young scientists of his day (and ours, for the text of his lectures are still exchanged as presents in Japan), there is a fundamental question posed by the candle flame that Faraday did not address.  Why does the candle have to be ignited with a match?  What occurs to actually light the flame? 

 

In his book The Physics of Christmas (subtitled “From the aerodynamics of reindeer to the thermodynamics of turkey”) Dr. Roger Highfield describes how a candle is kindled.  He writes:

"The driving force is actually the second law of thermodynamics, which can be roughly translated as the tendency of things to become disorganized....the match is required because, despite this natural tendency for the chemical reactions of burning to occur, there is an energy barrier between reactants in the candle and the products of combustion.  Think of this barrier as something like an initial investment that must be made for a candle to enter the energy business.  The combustion reaction will take place only if the reactants can be given help vaulting this barrier--by importing some energy with a match to snap chemical bonds and clash chemicals together so they react."[5]

 

While I may be stretching things a bit, I find the images in that passage mirror the challenges many of us face in December.  As suggested in the second law of thermodynamics, the tendency to become disorganized is clearly present this time of year.  Even if things are under control now, many of us may find ourselves scurrying to keep up before long.  Still, metaphorically speaking, we each have a candle ready to burn, even if we have forgotten how to access it.  I would even suggest that we are predisposed to the light, predisposed to appreciating the beauty of the season and of our lives.  All we need is to find the flame, to discover the match that provides the assistance required so that we might overcome our internal energy barriers.  We won't remove the barriers, just like we shouldn't expect to remove the stress we feel.  But maybe we can find ways to vault the barriers, to light our individual candles of the season despite the stress we might be feeling...despite the desire we might hold to just make it to January.

 

I think one of the more interesting aspects of the physics behind the production of candlelight is the role that gravity plays in helping to facilitate combustion.  Gravity not only stretches the flame into the familiar tear-shaped bead of light; it also enables that flame to be sustained in its light giving form.  Researchers studied a candle flame aboard a space shuttle mission and found that without the force of gravity, the candle flame immediately burned as a sphere with a bright yellow core, a stunning display of light.  After eight to ten seconds, however, the yellow disappeared and the flame became blue with significantly lower generation of light and heat.[6]

 

The inevitable stress many of us feel this time of year seems analogous to the undeniable force of gravity that grounds our lives on Earth.  Maybe the stress somehow adds to the beauty of the season, much like the force of gravity adds to the beauty of the candle's flame.  Perhaps by giving up on the idea of completely removing stress--in effect, acknowledging that it isn't going anywhere--maybe each of us can allow our individual flames to burn more steadily and more confidently.

 

So what is it that might encourage some of us to experience more of the beauty of the season, despite the forces working to bury us in our burdens?  For me, the candle may do the trick, for it is an exemplar of what the season can hold.  I know that the Christmas Eve service always stirs my heart the most when we are all holding our individual candles, our own little piece of the miracle of life and living.  That moment when the entire church is illumined with tiny dots of flickering light--when the gathering is transformed into a hazy sea of yellow-orange glow--I am reminded of the blessings that we share...the possibilities for light and love that remain, regardless of the magnitude of darkness that surrounds us.

 

So, do I have to wait until Christmas Eve to enjoy the season?  Well, I hope not.  As suggested in the Calvin and Hobbes Christmas Eve poem that Erika read, maybe waiting is the best part after all. This year may we try to welcome not only the beauty of the season, but the chaos as well, for in many ways, they are equal contributors to the glow of the holidays.  May we search for ways to light our candles of the season a little earlier and to accept the stress of December as an inevitable force that contributes to our candles' glow.   Toward this end, each December Sunday, in a spirit of mediation and reflection, we will be lighting a candle to represent a quality of the season.  This morning, the flame represents faith—the trust that grounds our living, that calls us to engage this precious life, that propels us to action and commitment.  Over the next three weeks, we will be lighting candles of hope, love, and joy, as well.  Each December Sunday, I encourage you to infuse this simple ritual with whatever speaks to your view of the divine, and may it serve you well as you navigate yourself through this chaotic time of year.

 

Before closing, the question I'd like to leave you with this morning is the title of this sermon: "What is your candle?"  What will you allow to light your spirit this year?  Will you accept the sparks as they are provided, and will they be enough to overcome the energy barriers in your heart?  It is no coincidence that many of the stories of the season involve transformation...from the wise men to Scrooge, from George Bailey to the Grinch.  Unexpected revelations abound this time of year if we open ourselves to them.  So what is your candle?  What you illuminate in yourself this season?  May the results surprise you in the most splendid ways.  Happy holidays everyone.  May we all enjoy the wait.

 

Closing Words

Adapted from Michael Faraday's Christmas lectures of 1860:

 

May we, like the candle, "shine as lights to those about [us]; that in all [our] actions, may [we] justify the beauty of the taper by making [our] deeds honourable and effectual in the discharge of [our] duty to [our] fellow [women and] men."