A practice for marking sacred time
Power outages, lighting candles, and being present when life unexpectedly slows you down
Everything shut off. The washing machine stopped running. The dryer halted. My computer screen went black and the room went dark.
No power.
This happens every so often when you practically live in the woods. We don’t have solar panels, but at this point I’m thinking we ought to get some. When you’re in your flow, knocking out chores, sending emails and gearing up for the day, nothing is quite as frustrating as a power outage.
But there I was. Sitting in the dark. Thinking about how to make my coffee without power for the kettle or grinder. Deep breaths.
I got up from my office chair and proceeded to open the curtains to get a little bit of daylight into our home. The sky was overcast so the light wasn’t the brightest, but it was better than sitting in the dark. I started looking for candles.
When I first transitioned into self-employment a few years ago, I was faced with the challenge of creating a new routine. One of the good things about working for someone else is that they often hand your life structure to you. You’re told where to be, when to be there, and what to do when you arrive. But when you work for yourself and those external pressures don’t exist in the same way, it can take a moment to find your footing. In those early days, after waking up and seeing my husband out the door, the only next step that made sense to me was to light a candle. It sounds simple, enough, right? But something about the quiet ritual of sparking a tiny flame grounded me. It was a gentle reminder of Creator’s presence. It was a marker of sacred time. Whether that time would be wasted watching Netflix or spent creatively building my business, either way, the candle reflected back to me a sort of attentiveness to the present moment.
Selah. God is here.
As I stumbled around my kitchen in the dark, looking first for candles, and then for matches or a lighter, I smiled to myself as I considered the unexpected ways life slows us down and pulls us into the present. This can happen with really painful situations of course. Grief, loss, and heartbreak certainly tether our spirits to the present moment in ways we probably would prefer to avoid. But there are also the tiny inconveniences that make us roll our eyes or shout in frustration. Like when the power goes out, for instance. Or when you get held up in traffic or stuck in a conversation with long-winded person. It’s as if life is saying, “Hey, where were you rushing off to anyway?!”
I’ve said before that slow living is the intentional choice to opt-out of the frenetic, anxious, and production-oriented nature of our time. But slow living also makes itself available to us when welcome those realities that make speed impossible, instead of resisting them.
What if, the next time you’re stuck in a line you mentally lit a candle and marked it as sacred time? Time to reflect, time to notice, time to be still.
What if, the next time you’re held up in a long conversation, you smiled to yourself and received the uniqueness of the person right in front of you as a gift?
And in moments when grief comes and loss overwhelms, what might it look like to not rush past it or push through it, but to slow down enough to be as present as you are able with the pain of it all? Not to dwell in misery, but to be honest about the ways your heart is breaking? What if those moments, too, are sacred time?
Winter is nearly upon us. The days are shorter, the darkness lingers. It’s the perfect season for candles. Some of us are celebrating Advent; others of us are dwelling in the mysticism of the coming Winter solstice. All of us are invited to not rush through this season. In so doing, we prepare our souls to receive all the joy this time of year has to offer.
Learning to make much of slow living is not about perfectly Instagrammable mornings with your coffee or quiet, long walks in the woods. Slow living is simply about choosing to be present to the very real texture of your life, be it difficult and uncertain or smooth and full of ease. It’s about presence. And in being present, the hope is that you’ll find the power to choose your responses to life, one step at a time.
Which brings me back to candles.
With December right around the corner, marking yet another year’s end, I pray you are able to light a candle, Beloved, and to remember the presence of God.