Lighting Candles

Our candles are our way to speak love into a world that can no longer listen.

Photo Credit: Unsplash | Volodymyr Hryshchenko

LIGHTING CANDLES

If you are afraid now, 
find the safest place you are able, 
make a small circle, 
one of love, 
and light a candle, 
even if it is only in your mind.
find the stillness, 
let the storm rage outside;
 
It is the passing of a fury 
and of an energy 
which the gentlest hearts of our time 
could not have held, 
you are not alone.
 
Even in this. 
 
Now is not the time for speaking, 
or shouting
 
Now is the time for lighting candles.
 
Our candles are our way to speak love into a world 
that can no longer listen.

Rocco Jarman

To paraphrase Krishnamurti, It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick moment or environment.

It is perfectly sane to be deeply troubled by the state of the world right now. We long for peace but we begin to wake up to the understanding that the conflict was long time coming and somewhat inevitable and that our time of peace and plenty was never more than a gracious reprieve, a long calm before a terrible and inevitable storm, the fury of which we have only just begun to see the first troubling signs of.

We have been trained by social media and society to rush to pick a side, to chime in, without understanding, driven by outrage and raw empathy.

We forget that two sides can both be guilty of separate and irreconcilable transgressions that do not justify either nor balance each other out. Each act of violence and oppression done out of ignorance and self-righteousness simply lays the foundation for future suffering and feeds the appetite for retribution and redress. In the same way, each indelicate volley of opinion and moral judgement we pass with no deeper understanding and compassion simply adds fuel to a fire that is already out of control.

In middle-eastern mysticism, candles are a symbol of the contained flame, to spare life from its destructive uncontained potential.

Now is not a time for speaking or arguing or for proclamations of moral superiority. Now is a time for lighting candles and embodying the peace and grace and stillness, the courage, within, that cannot be found without in the world.

What does love look like right now?

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AUTHOR’S NOTE:

If you are interested in joining me for a regular session on stillness, sense-making and how to curate gentleness and resolve in your soul while navigating the troubling truth of what is unfolding in the world, comment below here and I will line something up.