A Quaker Holiday Story: A “Carpet of Light” (Again) for (Another) Shadowed New Year
Out of the silence, as moved, Friends came to the table in ones or twos or family groups, and each lit another candle, which they placed on the table; they spoke if moved, then sat down again in the silence.
From the first time I experienced, the way that the whole room was progressively illuminated, seemed in fact to glow, as the number of flickering flames increased, was very moving to me.
In a way it was a visible, wordless, yet eloquent evocation of Quakerism at its best: a motley, seemingly haphazard collection of candles of witness, more diverse than we outwardly seem, mainly anonymous and individual, somehow joining together to become more than the sum of the parts.
This time, at the end of 2017, a year which for me has been very heavily shadowed, often deeply gloomy, and yes, dark, the full array became something of an encouraging signal for the year ahead.