All About Light

“All About Light”

A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
December 14, 2008

Next Sunday, December 21st, the sun will be at its greatest angular distance on the other side of the equatorial plane from each of us, if we remain in the Eastern Time Zone of the Northern Hemisphere. A note of explanation: the “equatorial plane” is the imagined line on the surface of our earth that is roughly the same distance from the North and South Poles, a line dividing our earth into the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere. The precise moment of the greatest distance that we’ll stand from our sun is 7:04 AM a week from today. It is the Winter Solstice, marking the shortest day of the year and the longest night of the year.

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
…rage, rage against the dying of the light,”

wrote the impassioned 20th century Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. While Thomas spoke of resistance to the light of life itself, year after year we counter the dying of the light that we glibly call sunshine as we approach the shortest day and longest night of the current earth-arc around the sun. The sun rises later and later and sets earlier and earlier. As darkness encroaches, our yearning for light intensifies.

In our own lives this week, we have known that “rage against the dying of the light” as we bore the news of a member of this church community whose life hung in the balance and who even now is regaining her sense of light and life at a nearby hospital. We bore the news of a longtime member of this church community and beloved member of this larger community whose life hangs in the balance in the wake of harrowing diagnoses and emergency treatments in Boston. Even as we deck our halls, sing our carols, place candles in our windows, and check our shopping lists—however modest in the economic reality that is now—we know in our bones that we are placing at the very top of our to-do lists resistance to lights out.

We yearn for light. We lean into the warmth of the hearth kindled with a log reminiscent of the Yule log, that pagan rite of countering light’s seasonal waning. We light candles as in no other season. We might not rise to the passion of “rage against the dying of the light,” but we have our methods, we have our rituals, we have our remedies, and we have our faith that light will return to our inmost souls extending to the outer reaches of our habitat and back again to our inmost souls. We have faith hoped for and evidence-bound that light will return, in whatever slow doses, as we transcend the solstice. On December 20th, our day is 9 hours, 4 minutes, and 49 seconds. On December 21st, our day diminishes to 9 hours, 4 minutes, and 48 seconds. Then the next day it expands to 9 hours, 4 minutes, and 51 seconds—a 3-second leap into the rebirth of light.

Ironically, the Winter Solstice signals the birth of winter. We commonly associate winter with less light, yet its beginning is the signal of more light, earlier sunrises, later sunsets, more light to warm us, illumine us, resurrect our spirits, and remind us that it happens every year, every single year, this rhythm of light diminished and light reborn. No matter what cluster of hope, anticipation, anguish or dread we hold personally or communally or globally, the cadence of our planet in its cosmic dance with our sun-star assumes a confident recycling of light diminished and light expanded. Winter is another word for spring. Beneath earth’s hardened surface, roots swell in readiness, warmed by a few more seconds, a few more minutes, of our sun-star’s radiance.

Is it any wonder—wondrous as these rhythms are—that our holidays and holy days mirror earth’s light-dance and hold in cosmic form our oh-so-human resistance, rage even, against darkness with our equally oh-so-human welcome, celebration even, of the promise of light? We worship this morning amid a season resplendent with holidays of light. Today is the third Sunday of Advent, a time of approach to that day when Christian beliefs tell us the Light of the World was born in a lowly manger. This year on the night of the Winter Solstice, Hanukkah begins at sundown—Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights observed by Jews worldwide. Just twelve days from now begins that holiday of relatively recent origin, Kwanzaa, when the first of seven candles are lit, affirming principles of right living among those of us of African-American heritage with lessons of right living for all of us.

Hope is pervasive across all of these holidays. Hope for light, hope for illumination, hope for enlightenment even. It infuses our songs, our poetry, our stories, our symbols of struggle against oppression. Light is ever dominant even as darkness hovers with the approach of the Solstice. The very word Solstice stems from the Latin words, “sol” for “sun” and “sistere” for day—solstice, “Day of the Sun!”

What is the fear as we approach this day? That darkness will encroach until that’s all there is. Surely we in this community have felt that fear as lives and futures hang in the balance, with earthlight seeming to mirror it all, even to mock it.

Our great-great-and beyond great grandfathers and grandmothers feared, raged, and contorted themselves over this apparent dying of the light, no matter how many times they had experienced counter-rhythms. In Britain, they kindled bonfires and kept them burning for days…just in case. In the circles cast by bonfire glow, they sang and danced and feasted. Is it so different for us now with Christmas at hand?

Beginning in 13th century Peru, the Incans observed “Inti Raymi,” “Festival of the Sun,” honoring the sun god Inti and coinciding with the winter solstice. Incan priests performed a ritual “tying of the sun” to a large stone column to prevent it from escaping. The practice died out with the Spanish conquest a few hundred years later. Spanish Christians suppressed these rich earth-bound rituals and destroyed every remnant of them except for Machu Picchu, which, blessedly, remained out of their reach. Over the past half century, the rite of Inti Raymi has been dramatically enacted at a site close to Cusco, capital of the ancient Incan Empire, at the time of the Winter Solstice of the Southern Hemisphere. Just two years ago, Cusco was identified as the site “with the highest ultraviolet light level” of any place on earth. I wonder if subliminally perhaps, recent Peruvians have been honoring this sight where light is close to invasive!

From Cusco to Cohasset, from time ancient to this very morning, we yearn for light. We crave reassurance that darkness is not for good. If we grow dubious, if we succumb to the darkness, there’s even a name for it now—“seasonal affective disorder”—SAD, for short and an understatement for many who suffer from it. Our oh so human needs have inspired remedies that wind their ways through the celebrations of this time—Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa— each of them filled with light, commonly in the language of candles burning bright. In reverie and meditation, in story and in song, we anticipate. We dare to hope. We light our candles of Advent, of Hanukkah, of Kwanzaa. Our souls keep vigil. “Within the flame,” remarked Gaston Bachelard, “even time holds its vigil.”

We are attentive; we anticipate; we hope. On this third Sunday of Advent, we draw closer to that day when our Christian selves celebrate the birth of a child deemed by millions as the Light of the world and connected by myriad Christian theologians with the messianic language of the prophet Isaiah:

“The people that walked in darkness
Have seen a great light;
On those who lived in a land as dark as death
A light has dawned.” (Isaiah 9:2)

Dawn awakens seasonal hope, messianic imagination, and the custom of candles nestled in a wreath. This practice of placing candles in a wreath of pine boughs comes to us from pre-Christian Europe, where it was repeated annually as a rite of hope that days would once again grow long and the earth would once more give birth to flora and fauna. Christians draw on this pagan custom as a ritual of anticipation for the birth of the Christ child, born in humble circumstance, yet under a star guiding men wise and simple to the manger.

The Christmas tree itself is a legacy of our ancestors’ need to craft a harbinger of seasonal dawn. Arrayed with candle-like lights and originally live candles, it draws us into the magic of the moment. The Christmas tree was planted in our cultural habits in the early 16th century when the first decorated tree was placed in the Strasbourg Cathedral. The year was 1539, during the lifetime of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and the Unitarian martyr, Michael Servetus.

A tree itself is candle-like in stature, pointing skywards—a stance of hope and affirmation across the seasons. The fir tree forms a veritable spire of green during the briefest hours of winter light, like the vertical flame of a candle that inspires us to hope amid the oppressive force of extended night.

Hope is what the candles of Hanukkah signal. Some of us have menorahs, or Hanukkah lampstands, in our homes. Next Sunday we’ll light the menorah here, observing Hanukkah’s beginning at sundown. For the eight nights of Hanukkah, we lift the candle known as the shammash, the servant candle, to light one candle a night until all eight candles and the shammash burn brightly, reminding us of the ancient miracle of lights.

Hanukkah means “dedication” and marks the rededication of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem after Judah and his fellow warriors, the Maccabees, triumphed over their oppressors almost 2,200 years ago. A scant portion of oil had been rescued from the original temple, only enough to burn for a single day. Yet when the Jews began the rite of rededication and kindled the oil, it lasted eight days. It was this miracle of lights that led Judah to proclaim a holiday, originally called the Festival of Lights.

It is a holiday of hope against hope. Through the centuries, those who are Jewish among us are called to light the menorah, no matter how trying the circumstances. In a cramped garret in Holland, a young girl wrote in her diary on December 7, 1942.
“‘We just gave each other a few little presents and then we lit the candles. Because of the shortage of candles, we only had them alight for ten minutes.’”

Lighting a candle in community is an act of hope and affirmation for all who know oppression.

It was in a struggle against oppression that Dr. Maulena Karenga created the rites of Kwanzaa almost half a century ago. Kwanzaa is Swahili for “first fruits of the harvest.” It’s celebrated through food and story and song and candle over a period of seven days, from December 26 through January 1. In a candleholder called the Kinara, seven candles are lit over the span of these seven days, symbolizing the principles of Kwanzaa—Unity, Self-determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity, and Faith. In the words of Dr. Karenga, these are principles by which “Black people must live to…rescue and reconstruct our history and lives.”

Bonfires blaze, trees are adorned, candles are lit—candles of Advent, candles of menorahs, candles of kinaras—as luminous signals that the light will not go out, that light will return and with it, hope for a world reborn as spring, as a baby, as a shift in the angle of earth in our Universe, as possibility. In the words of Dori Jeanine Somers that we spoke earlier this morning:

“…there is that in me which reaches up toward light and laughter, bells, and carolers, and knows that my religious myth and dream of reborn joy and goodness must be true, because it speaks the truths of older myths; that light returns to balance darkness, life surges in the evergreen—and us.

And babes are hope, and saviors of the world, as miracles abound in common things.”

As we approach the darkest time of year, what hovers in our midst feels like a taunting mirror-like “dark night of the soul.” It is our time of times to light our candles, hold hope, and know that the darkest of times is all about light waiting, approaching, shining. Amen.


Sources:

Gaston Bachelard, The Flame of a Candle, translated from the French by Joni Caldwell, The Bachelard Translation Series, The Dallas Institute Publications, 1961, 1984, 16.

Miriam Chaikin, Light Another Candle: The Story and Meaning of Hanukkah, Houghton Mifflin Company Trade & Reference Division, Boston, MA, 1981.

Ronald M. Clancy, Best-Loved Christmas Carols, Edited by William E. Studwell, Christmas Classics, Ltd., North Cape May, NJ, 2000.

“Equator,” from wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equator.

Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl, Edited by Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler, Translated by Susan Massotty, Doubleday, 1947.

The Book of Isaiah, The Bible, Revised Standard Version.

Liley, J. Ben and McKenzie, Richard L. (April 2006) "Where on Earth has the highest UV?" UV Radiation and its Effects: an update NIWA Science, Hamilton, NZ, in Cusco, from wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cusco.

Dori Jeanine Somers, “Reflections on the resurgence of Joy,” in Singing the Living Tradition, The Unitarian Universalist Association, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, 653.

“Sunrise and Sunset for U.S.A. – Massachusetts – Boston – December 2008,” http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/astronomy.html?n=43&month=12&year=2008&obj=sun&afl=-11&day=1.

Dylan Thomas, “Do not go gentle into that good night,” The Poems of Dylan Thomas, New Directions, 1952, 1953. Copyright © 1937, 1945, 1955, 1962, 1966, 1967 the Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas. Copyright © 1938, 1939, 1943, 1946, 1971 New Directions Publishing Corporation.

Christy Thorrat, “The Winter Solstice,” in Celebrating Christmas: An Anthology, Edited by Carl Seaburg, Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, 1983, 2004, Authors Choice Press, New York, 251.

“Winter Solstice,” from wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice.

http://www.chiff.com/home_life/holiday/winter-solstice.htm