Friday, Day 20: Flame

You cannot put a fire out;
A thing that can ignite
Can go, itself, without a fan
Upon the slowest night.
--Emily Dickinson

As the Easter liturgy wears on—two a.m., three a.m.—we hold tightly to our candles, watch the flame to make sure the wick can hold it. The plastic cup secured to the candle catch the wax, but we have to remember to keep scooting it down as the candle burns so it does its job. In the process, sometimes a little wax escapes. The black cover of my Holy Week services book sports spatterings of wax, as do some of the pages toward the end.

We carry the candle up to take communion, hold it carefully away from the cloth we take in our hands and hold under our chins. We carry it back to our seats to hear the joyful Easter sermon by St. John Chrysostom, including these words:

"If any have struggled from the first hour, let them today receive their just reward. If any have come at the third hour, let them with thankfulness enjoy the feast. If any have arrived at the sixth hour, let them not hesitate; they will not be turned away. If any have delayed to the ninth hour, let them draw near, fearing nothing. If any have delayed until the eleventh hour, let them, also, not be alarmed by their tardiness; for the Lord will accept the last even as the first; God will give rest unto those who come at the eleventh hour as surely as He will to those who have struggled from the first."

We are still there, whether or not we kept the fast during Lent. Our candles are now half the length they were to start. The idea is to get at least one candle, still burning, to each family’s home, to bless the doorway, to light a more permanent flame in the house and let it burn with the New Life, the Good News of Easter.

“You cannot put a fire out,” Dickinson writes, a sentence so ordinary and declarative that her readers nod, believing her, even though, of course, this is simply not true. You can put a fire out. And, in fact, a fan would eliminate a small flame rather than feeding it, as so many of us who carried our Easter candles into a windy night have learned.

Of course, there’s the exception of the all-encompassing fire that engulfs forest, house, or neighborhood.  These fires are fed by wind rather than eliminated by it. It is not the small flame of a candle that we need to fear, but the human hand that could somehow put that flame or its ember in a place where it will quickly catch and grow.

In the second stanza of this short and puzzling poem, Dickinson goes on to write:

You cannot fold a Flood--
And put it in a Drawer--
Because the Winds would find it out--
And tell your Cedar Floor--

All of the sudden we’ve left the burning forest fire and we’re back in somebody’s home, trying to tuck a flood into a drawer. Whatever we understand about the power of fire or water, we can’t keep it to ourselves. The flame and flood might be metaphors for some specific secret, for a deep and passionate love, or for creative power, or for any good news we are carrying in our private spaces that can't be held there. 

I often think of this poem at the end of the liturgy, when, tired and hungry, we emerge from the sanctuary with our now short candles, the plastic cups pulled up as high as possible to shield them from the wind, and try our best to get to them home.

Even when the candle is finally put out by the wind or our own breath, the smell of beeswax clings to our clothes, and whatever has stuck from that long encounter with New Life stays with us, if we continue to fan the flame, to make a discipline of truly celebrating the 40 days of Easter.

“It was embittered,” St. John Chrysostom wrote of death, “for it was abolished. It was embittered, for it was mocked. It was embittered, for it was slain. It was embittered, for it was overthrown. It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains. It took a body, and met God face to face. It took Earth, and encountered heave. It took what was seen, and fell upon the unseen. O, Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory?”

We hold our candles up and repeat the chorus after each line: It was embittered!

We hold them up and make the sign of the cross as we sing the Easter hymn one last time before we are dismissed.