I write this as many of you are probably preparing many, many candles for the moment when strains of “Silent Night” will begin at your Christmas Eve services. Preparing candles for any ritual action at any worship experience feels like a sacred duty to me. As I unpack them, stand up their wicks and place them in the space, it feels like I get to be a midwife of light emerging yet again. I know… sounds a bit liturgy-geek-ish. I’m guilty.

Newgrange

Light is one of the oldest and most universal “anchor images” we have in the human repertoire of symbols. And why wouldn’t it be? Our need for, and astonishment at, the sun rising each day is as old as humanity. It signals hope, warmth, vision and a constant presence of something far bigger than any one of us. It has ordered our time, our seasons, our lives.

We just lived through the winter solstice (obviously the Mayans were predicting a time of the regeneration of the cycles of life, not destruction of it) where the light of the sun is the most short-lived of the year. I recently visited one of the most ancient ritual sites I’ve ever seen at Newgrange in Ireland. Stone Age people (dates)  constructed a burial chamber in a huge earthen mound in such a way that on the morning of the winter solstice, the rising sun would pierce a perfectly-aligned opening into the chamber and the stream of light would shine through to the depths of the tomb where remains were laid to rest. Now every year, there is a drawing for about 20 people (that’s as many as the chamber will hold) to be inside the chamber at that moment to witness this just as the ancients did. But while I was there this phenomenon was simulated. We stood in utter, complete, darkness. And then slowly a shaft of light began to make its way… crawling across the earth floor from the opening until it began to inch up the back of the tomb and illumine the whole space. Goosebumps.

And so it is that light piercing the darkness has held such a basic symbolic power for humanity since the “dawn” (pun intended) of our existence. Most spiritual traditions utilize this symbol and have ritual actions associated with it. As we Christians sing our “Silent Night” and multiply the light from one to another of us, may we embody the hope and life renewed that comes with our Emmanuel and be the church that proclaims that no matter who you are, no matter how dim the corners of your life may feel, no matter where you are on whatever spiritual journey, the Light is unending and hope is present… always.