Praying with Light: In Candlemas and Starless Nights

Poems, prayers and meditations which could be used in a daily discipline.

The liturgical year is filled with seasons of light. We move through the seasons and bring our weary light-deprived souls with us, as if there is no light, as if it only shines at Christmas, on the righteous, the lucky, or the blessed. But light is a part of life and we are all blessed with it. It surrounds us and breathes over us and through us. It blinds us and invades us. Light finds a way, when there is no way. Light is a lamp in the darkness and a beacon through the storms that life bombards us with on the journey.

The Sunday of Candlemas marks the end of the Christmas season, but it does not mark the end of light coming into the world; rather it reminds us that the joy of Christ’s birth is only the beginning of the gift we have been given, are given, and will be given.