Kindling Candle Lights

As I mentioned in the last blog post, I’ll have my garage doors open on Thurs Dec 9 and Saturday Dec 11 from 2-4pm for a candle-holder making workshop. Contact me thru the website if you are interested in attending. Space is limited.

This will be a low pressure learning environment, designed to pick up and try out some basic skills for woodworking. And you’ll take a functional candle-holder home (which you can work further and finish as you like.)

The whole time is a kind of prayer. As you conceive and implement a project, as you measure, mark, cut, fit and sand, you are praying.

But I will also offer some specific things you can do to integrate a spirit of prayerful-ness into you workshop time.

Here is the candle-holder I’m working on. It is the basic cross pattern that you can make as well. I’ve been whittling some images into the face. Just for fun, ‘just for pretty’, and a bit more.

You see here my meager attempts to carve a rose, a sun, a moon with seven stars, and a living tree.

May we all see and feel enough light and warmth as winter nears. The Christian year begins with the season of Advent on Sunday, 11/28/21. I think of it as a time especially to be celebrated with prayers for light, dwelling in this symbolism for the divine life and presence. Among my Jewish friends and neighbors, the Jewish year brings the festival of Chanukkah, with its own storied symbolism of light.

Both these religious seasons dwell in this earthly season of the northern hemisphere, when we inhabit the darkness, and look for the return of the light. And we are guided to kindle lights.