Sermon by Rev. Kathleen McTigue, December 16, 2001
Kindling lights in the wintertime is a practice deeply rooted in our hearts and souls. Before any of the great religions of our era had come to be, our ancestors all over the world lit their fires and sang their sacred songs in the darkness as the longest night approached. Anthropologists tell us that that even on the equator, where the differences in light are so slight, people across time have noticed and honored this turning of the earth. Religious scholars know that it is not accidental that the later festivals of light like Hanukkah and Christmas also come at this time of year, when so many parts of the earth get slow and quiet and cold and we hunger for a sign that life is still beating quietly at the heart of things.
So many different festivals of light we have devised for ourselves over millennia. They began with that ancient longing to honor the literal light -- the sun, the stars, the moon, the bright fires. And they serve us still because they also give us a way to celebrate light as a universal metaphor, the illumination of the heart and the soul. It is this celebration of the metaphoric light that is held in common by all the religions whose holy days converge this December. Ramadan honors the light of prophesy handed to Mohammed in the form of the Koran. Hanukkah honors the light of religious freedom, and Christmas the light brought by Jesus of Nazareth. Kwanzaa, a much newer celebration, honors the light of community and struggle held up against slavery and racism.
So one would think -- one would fervently hope -- that it would be in December, with all these religions lighting their flames and speaking their truths, that this suffering global family of ours would finally get it. One would pray -- one would want passionately to believe -- that we could suddenly have a great collective 'Aha!' experience and look across our divides at one another and blink in the bright light of new awareness.
But the shadows are particularly thick this year.
Things are not normal, and it is not easy to set aside the reality in which we're dwelling and abandon ourselves to beloved traditions, or even to thoughtless spending (should we be so inclined). We are edgy and anxious, saturated with the images and the language of war. American flags flutter up against the Christmas wreaths as though some peculiar slippage of the calendar has brought us the Fourth of July out of season, jostling aside the tinsel and the greens. The shadow of war makes the normally annoying commercial clamor sound even more shrill and unreasonable. It makes the favorite carols almost unbearably poignant: 'O Little town of Bethlehem/How still we see thee lie…' -- the words become forlorn as they evoke images of present-day Bethlehem, so relentlessly torn and bloodied.
It has never been easy to know what to do with grief or loss at a holiday time. It has never been easy to pour our hearts into a festival of light when the shadows thicken around us, whether they are due to a personal trauma or a collective one like war. And this season, it's likely that all over the world the holy days that are linked to this turning of the planet are greeted and honored with an edge of solemnity or sorrow or pleading of the heart not normally felt.
Despite how deeply our religious traditions are twined and linked to one another, they haven't helped our troubled human family find our way out of mortal combat with each other. It is painful to recognize the chasm between our religions and our reality. It is painful to note yet again that despite all our centuries of struggling toward goodness, human evil still thrives so persistently. How do we kindle our winter lights in these times? Or, perhaps a more pointed and honest question, Why do we kindle our winter lights in such times?
We do it for lots of reasons of course, even in normal times, even in the best of times. Some of us celebrate the Solstice because it ties us to something older and more serene than our drastic human histories. Some of us kindle the Hanukkah lights because its familiar prayers bind us to grandparents and great-grandparents, and remind us of the threads that connect us to the Jewish family all over the world who are kindling their own lights.
Some of us put up the Christmas tree and the wreaths and lights just because they are beautiful as they brighten a landscape not yet softened with snow. And some of us do it to honor the birth of Jesus, willing to immerse ourselves in the lovely tales of angels and guiding stars, not because we believe but because they are lovely tales, and because his was a life worthy of honor and remembrance. And we kindle the lights in all these ways also because they offer us something as counterpoint to the relentless jingles and ads and mountains of catalogues that want us only to buy and consume, and then buy some more.
These are the reasons we kindle our winter lights in any ordinary year, and they are good reasons still even in a year that feels slanted and askew. But I think of our small lights differently this year, and find that the external lights are more than usually evocative for me of the metaphoric ones, the illumination of heart and spirit that we hope for as we grow in our lives. In hard times, when the shadows made by our own violence against one another seem especially thick and ominous, it seems to me that the kindling of our lights is also a way to simply bear witness.
First, we bear witness to the suffering. This is not an easy thing to do. We are people of word and deed, activists in our innumerable ways. We greet the problems of the world by putting our clever minds and diligent hands to work for their solutions -- a good and noble thing to do. But we know in our heart of hearts that much of the suffering of the world cannot be mended. What do we do when there is no clear course of action? When the conflicts we see bear the tangled weight of centuries? When the suffering is almost too enormous to grasp? It is tempting to withdraw and to turn our eyes away. But I think that it is in these times of helplessness, above all, when we are called to bear witness to the suffering.
For quite a long time it has been my practice to begin my meditation practice by lighting a candle -- a common and simple little ritual not taken from any particular religion. Until recent weeks it has carried no symbolic weight for me -- it has merely been a way to signal my busy mind that something quiet is about to happen. Candles have a way of settling the mind; even in daylight the flame makes a small circle of light that invites a stillness, and when our minds are full of tumult and chatter our eyes can rest on the steadiness of the flame.
But these days when I come to my time of meditation, I bring with me all the large and unanswered questions of our troubled time, all the anguish that pours out to us from the news. So the small gesture of lighting a candle has taken on the weight of a kind of prayer, a place to go with the gathered burden of each day's questions and anguish.
The candle has been lit for the families whose circle was shattered on September 11, for their first Hanukkah or Christmas without the one they lost. It's been lit for the families whose sons are fighting in Afghanistan, and for the families who cower as the bombs are dropped. It has lifted its quiet flame for the dead and wounded in Palestine and for the dead and wounded in Israel. It has been lighted for the forgotten ones in our own streets and alleys for whom nothing at all changed on September 11, because they were already living as casualties.
I have lit the candle for the women of Kabul I see in the paper whose faces are tight with desperation as they scrabble against one another toward the bags of wheat, beaten away again and again by the soldiers who are handing it out. One of the soldiers told the Reuters reporter, 'The women are so much more aggressive than the men!". He said this as though it would be shocking, and reading his words I look again at the photo and think: of course they are. Behind the fierce light in each of their faces is the baby with his thin arms, the child who is weeping with hunger, the one who has already died. So I light my candle for that fierceness and for the pain that has made these women so strong.
And the candle has been lighted for the captured Taliban soldier whose eyes glare out from the front page with rage or fear or defiance -- lighted for the knowledge that before his photo rested between my cold fingers this man had been killed by his captors: this enemy of ours, this child of God. Every day, in these sad times, there is some new face of anguish, some new and wrenching wound to name as a single small candle offers its pale circle of light and I sit with the sorrow and helplessness and offer them into an inner silence.
Before me sits the serene face of the Buddha, the small statue that graces my little shrine at home, and I remember that the India in which he lived and taught and found his illumination was also a place of profound suffering. He did not come to his awakening by turning his face away from it, but by looking at it steadily and allowing his heart to break, again and again. There is an odd and paradoxical power in bearing witness to the pain of the world we cannot mend. It keeps us anchored, unflinching, in what is before us. It opens us to compassion not just for friend but for foe, shifting us subtly away from our fortresses. And it keeps us alert and attentive so that when a way becomes clear, we can again act, and try to lessen the tides of sorrow.
When we kindle our lights in difficult times we also bear witness in another way. We bear witness to hope, by reminding ourselves that there is a vision we hold of a world at peace, and that we carry some small part of the means to reach that vision. The metaphoric light we celebrate, the illumination of mind and spirit, is not just something that arises by chance or by grace. It is also something we carry potential within us, to lift up against despair -- our own or the world's.
In one of his many books Robert Fulghum tells a story of an encounter he had with a Greek professor, Dr. Papaderos, at the end of an intensive two-week seminar on Greek culture. At the conclusion of the last session on the last day, Fulghum recounts how Papaderos stood before the class and made the ritual gesture: 'Are there any questions?'
Fulghum writes, "Quiet quilted the room. These two weeks had generated enough questions for a lifetime, but for now there was only silence. 'No questions?' Papaderos swept the room with his eyes. So, I asked: 'Dr. Papaderos, what is the meaning of life?' The usual laughter followed, and people stirred to go. Papaderos held up his hand and stilled the room and looked at me for a long time…
'I will answer your question.' Taking his wallet out of his hip pocket, he …brought out a very small round mirror, about the size of a quarter. And what he said went like this: 'When I was a small child, during the war, we were very poor and we lived in a remote village. One day on the road I found the broken pieces of a mirror. A German motorcycle had been wrecked in that place. I tried to find all the pieces and put them together, but it was not possible, so I kept only the largest piece. This one. And by scratching it on a stone I made it round. I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light into dark places where the sun would never shine -- in deep holes and crevices and dark closets. It became a game for me to get light into the most inaccessible places I could find.
I kept the little mirror, and as I went about my growing up I would take it out in idle moments and continue the challenge of the game. As I became a man, I grew to understand that this was not just a child's game but a metaphor for what I might do with my life. I came to understand that I am not the light or the source of light. But light -- truth, understanding, knowledge -- is there, and it will only shine in many dark places if I reflect it.
I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have I can reflect light into the dark places of this world -- into the shadowed places in the hearts of people -- and change some things in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is the meaning of my life.' And then he took his small mirror and, holding it carefully, caught the bright rays of daylight streaming through the window and reflected them onto my face and onto my hands folded on the desk."
There are many ways to kindle our winter lights. I hope that even in these anxious times, we can kindle the lights for tradition, for joy, for the abiding love of family and friends. I hope as well that we will see that kindling the lights this year is a way to bear witness-- a way to renew in ourselves the willingness to be, ourselves, the light against winter's shadows, and to shine as brightly as we can. AMEN.