Sunday Morning Candle


Psalm 26

 The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom should I fear? The LORD is my life’s refuge; of whom should I be afraid?  (Catholic Domain Bible) 

Because of  rising early during the week, I get up early on the weekends also. Sometimes I can get back to sleep, most of the time I can't. I envy those that have a weekend-setting for sleeping-in like the iPhone alarm setting. 5 days of up early means that Saturday and Sunday, I am getting up. Majority rules. I tend to be that way, on or off, up or down, black or white.

So, I arise while it is still dark and begin the ritual of waking up, drinking some coffee, and letting the clouds of subconsciousness lift in the sun of wakefulness. The last couple of weeks I have also been lighting a candle in the living room. Its soft glow fits my progressive return to life. I think it must be my high church background of candles and incense as a kid at St. Monica's in Berwyn, Pa. I don't think the material world is sacred but it is sacramental. The Creator-Creation distinction is inviolable in Christian theology. Sacramental means that the Creation is God-touched but not God.

The soft whisper of the wind which is beautiful can scale up to gale-like gusts that break trees in half. So, sacramental permits that spectrum where sacred does not.

The light of a candle is tenuous, apt to be snuffed out by a draft. Yet, the same candle can start a house on fire if it escapes its confines. The light the candle emits though is not swayed by the breeze. Light in the Bible is created before the sun and skeptics use this sequence to posit that the Bible is not true, as if the writer of the text somehow got this wrong--surmising the only source of light is our sun. That sounds really heliocentric. My thought on this is God created light first by fiat.

Maybe it is Platonic in a way to consider that God had to first think something into existence as a concept, that the idea had to exist before the reality of it. It is how an artist works I suppose. The Sunday morning candle is a quiet reminder that there is a time to rest and reflect. The harshness, hardness, and drudgery of life get softened by the swaying light, both strong and soft at once.      




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