Candle Tending and Caring for the soul

Abraham Heschel in his book "The Sabbath" says, "Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. ... Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self."

One of the things I do to remind myself it is the Sabbath is to light candles around the house. I see those throughout the day and remember that this is time set apart for resting, caring for my soul, and particularly NOT working.

Candles in the prayer room at the KC Boiler room
(I don't have this many going at my house at once)

As a consequence of burning candles, I tend to go through a lot of them and have started making candles as sort of a hobby, which fulfills two functions: one, it gives me a creative outlet that I can actually do here in Mali, and two, it is a socially acceptable way to play with fire. :-)

One thing I have noticed is that candles, in order to really fulfill their purpose of giving light and burning for a long time, need to be tended to, much in the way the 10 bridesmaids had to "keep their lamps ready" for the coming of the bridegroom. Matthew 25:1-13 tells their story. They got their lamps while they waited for the bridegroom to arrive. Five were smart and bought extra oil in advance and five did not and so when he finally came at midnight, they didn't have enough oil to light their lamps.

Cell phone charging tower on the
bike trip I took last year. 

It seems that the metaphor of constantly tending to something to keep it alive may be lost on our modern culture. What things do we really have to tend to over time? I know early on in my time in Africa, I used lanterns, which need to be filled with kerosene, have their wicks trimmed, and the globes cleaned.  In my daily life now, I still have to tend to my water filtration system, cleaning the filter at least once a week, keeping the siphon going, making sure I don't overfill it which results in water all over the floor, or underfill which results in . . . not enough water to drink.

What are the possible parallels in modern life? Perhaps trying to keep digital devices fully charged up when you're away from home. How would the parable go today? "There were 10 hollywood groupies waiting for the big star to appear. 5 kept their smartphones on standby to save their batteries, but 5 SMSed and tweeted until he finally appeared....."


But back to candles. 
As I thought about candles several things came to mind.
First off, candles can be really beautiful and some people will never light them so as to keep them looking pretty. But they never really provide any light or warmth if you keep them pristine. Our purpose in life is to burn bright for others to see.

If left on its own, a candle will burn out rather quickly. For example, a hole might form in one side and all the wax will flow out the hole and it will be burned down in 15 minutes.
If the wind (or ceiling fan) is blowing and the candle is not properly shielded, it will either blow quickly out OR burn through a lot of wax in a short time. (Cue sappy Elton John music. . . . )

I had a pillar candle in a glass jar in the kitchen last week. This was a home-made candle and the wick was not properly centered, so that it ended up burning straight down one side of the candle. When I came upon it, there was maybe an inch of wick sitting curled up in a bit of melted wax. You could see the bottom of the jar. It would have been "out" in 15 minutes if I had not intervened. I managed to cut off a bunch of the unmelted wax and put it down next to the wick and melt it. Then I gently moved the wick more towards the center and straightened it up. I have been tending to this candle, and it now has several hours of life left in it.
Sometimes in life, we burn a bit too close to the margin and we need to have our wick "re-centered" and boundaries shifted around to provide enough context and margin to keep going. 

I have found that candles in small jars or tins burn nicely for much longer than an equivalent non-shielded candle. The wax tends to melt uniformly and form a pool all the way across the top of the container. It will burn slowly and steadily without distracting air currents. Sometimes, though, the melted wax will get too deep and the flame will go way down, and even go out. In those cases, you have to pour off a bit of the excess wax that is drowning out the flame.  What distractions are battering your flame left and right? What excess things in your life are drowning out your flame?

Other times the jar candles will burns too quickly and the flame gets big. I found that if I have some left over wax from another candle, I can hold this over the flame and let it melt down into the candle, providing a bit of extra fuel, filling up the "reservoir" and allowing it to burn a lot longer.  We need to make time to get "fueled up", especially in times when our activities cause us to put out a lot of light. 

Lord, help me keep me care for the seed of eternity planted in my soul, 
Tending to the unique flame you have given me to burn in my corner of the world.
Help me not to burn too quickly - bright but burned up before my time.
Help me to keep my wick centered on you and not over next to the edges, 
where I am likely to melt out and make a mess without having given much light.
Protect me from distracting winds that blow, 
From having too much to do which will drown my flame
or from burning while low on fuel which will cause me to burn too fast and too bright. 
 Amen