Our Christmas Eve service ends with all of us lighting candles, after we have put on our coats, and we walk out of the church with lit candles, singing carols.
OK, so it is very dangerous, all that flame and hair and jackets and close proximity to the same BUT for me it is the magic of Christmas. To look at all those people I love and some who I barely know. To see the candle flame reflected in their eyes, and to see the children for who this is even more magical than it is to this 54 year old sap.
So, this year we will extinguish our candles before we go outside. Part of the challenge at FPLEX is to get home with your candle still lit. Silly, but yes many of us try to do this every year.
This year George and Judy are coming for Christmas and I was really looking forward to sharing this experience with them. SO, I guess we will bring matches and light our candles once we are out of the 150+ wooden building.
It makes sense, but are we going to end up in a society where we are so cautious about everything that we don't take chances to experience magic? NO, I don't like change when it is done to me and affects my favorite 10 minutes of the church year. Rev Bill also changed the Christmas Eve service in a year when Bethany and the Senior High always lit the candles in the service, and his first year, other younger kids and adults lit the candles. I was crushed about that one as well.
Some of my thoughts last night were:
- Shall we just leave our candles lit
- Go to another church, Bethany talked me off the wall on that one
- Sit in the balcony, where you have to extinguish them anyway before you come down
- Try to get it changed.
In the end, it will not be changed, and I should not expect to have it changed. It would have been great to know this a few months ago when it was decided so I had some time to absorb it, but we don't communicate the tenuous stuff well do we?
I will get over it and no one can extinguish my candle forever, just temporarily until I get outside.
In the end I emailed the Minister and Board Chair asking if there is anything I can do to get this changed.
My virtual candle will be lit, and I will still make eye contact without the most important part of the lit candle. It will not be the same. I cannot control everything especially when I have been so detached anyway. Just remember that I am often the canary in the coal mine. I am not the only one feeling this way, just one of those who expresses it.
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