I just learned that there is a hitch to installing the Interfaith Peace Pole at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. If this often touted "forgotten borough" needs a new image, it needs the symbol of the Peace Pole sponsored by the Building Bridges Coalition even more. Since the Building Bridges Thanksgiving Interfaith service, the Peace Pole with its universal message of "May Peace prevail on earth", has traveled from house of worship to house of worship. Interfaith clergy and lay leaders from denominations as vast as Catholic, Protestant, Unitarian Universalist, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim and Jain have been looking forward to the August 28th walk from St. Peter's Catholic Church to the mosque near St. George and to its final installation at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. How can government officials fail to see its installation as anything other than positive?
Staten Island, for all its stereotypes, for all its isolation and for all its problems is a truly wonderful place to live. We are not unlike other boroughs and New Yorkers, unlike other cities in this vast landscape of the United States. Last summer, we had a terrible searing summer--it wasn't the summer heat--it was violence. Interfaith clergy, politicians, activists, community organizations, businesses, communities across the whole borough came together to talk about what we could do. We are working on the problems. We are trying to be whole.
But for the life of me, I cannot understand a decision to deny our application to install an Interfaith Peace Pole at the Ferry Terminal. We so desperately need to reinforce an image of Staten Island that is not racist, bigoted, shameful--that is instead about our children and the hope and the light they bring to our lives. We are Staten Island and we are about cooperation, peaceful coexistence, mutual understanding, sheltering one another when there is a storm. And the best part about Staten Island is in this symbol of the Peace Pole. Do you know how many hundreds of thousands of people know Staten Island only by our ferry boats? How many people have fallen in love or went on their first date taking the ferry ride? Consider what this Peace Pole means-- sanctified by so many houses of worship, by people with different beliefs and understandings but gathered together as one body in this borough with a commitment to living together peacefully, in compassion and with empathy and care for one another.
I only pray that we can create a groundswell of people beseeching our mayor and softening his heart to hear our prayer--let the Interfaith Peace Pole be installed at the Ferry Terminal. Let the people of the world know us by our love, care, compassion and respect for one another. Let people everywhere know our common prayer for peace and kindness, generosity and love that is at the heart of every religion, that is in each person's soul somewhere. Please join with me in bringing the Peace Pole to the Staten Island Ferry on Sunday, August 28th.
May Peace indeed prevail on earth and let it begin with me,
Susan
Showing posts with label Building Bridges Coalition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Building Bridges Coalition. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
May Peace Prevail on Earth
May 22, 2011
Reflection: “We are facing an age where the politics of the world must be carried out by each individual who repeats the words “May Peace Prevail On Earth” thus becomes a great force for realizing Peace in the world.”- Founder Masahisa Goi
The Peace Pole Project was started in Japan by Masahisa Goi (1916 – 1980), who dedicated his life to spreading the message, “May Peace Prevail on Earth”. The Unitarian Church of Staten Island, as a member of the Building Bridges Coalition, participates in the Peace Pole Project by installing the traveling Peace Pole during our Worship celebration. The Peace Pole will reside at the Unitarian Church of Staten Island from May 22nd till June 4th. The musical group, Brother Sun, who played during this service, also held a concert on May 22nd at 7 p.m.
Call To Community by Sally Jones, Co Chair of the Social Justice committee at the Unitarian Church of Staten Island
What do you think about when you think about a Pole? A May Pole? Dancing around a center with a stream of flowers celebrating the joy at the return of summer? Totem Poles carved by the first peoples to live in the Pacific Northwest, with the story of their families, history, and legends carved top to bottom? Or do you think of a Flag Pole? A Barber’s Pole? A utility pole? The North Pole? The South Pole?
How about a Peace Pole? In my travels across the country, I have happened on a Peace Pole here and there – in front of a museum, beside a church, in a town square. The words on the side of the pole that read in different languages “May Peace Prevail on Earth” made me feel a little more welcome and a little more open. I didn’t know anything about where they came from or who planted them.
The idea of the Peace Pole came from a man who was born in Japan in 1916 - Masahisa Goi. After the horrible destruction of World War II and the dropping of 2 atomic bombs on the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Mr. Goi dedicated his life to teaching others about his vision for global peace through spirituality, meditation, and prayer. In 1955, he initiated an international Movement of Prayer for World Peace with the message “May Peace Prevail on Earth.” He died in Japan in 1980 but his movement continued. One way it continued was with the Peace Pole Project.
I read that there are 200,000 Peace Pole markers around the world, in every continent, in every country, in every conceivable language.
Planting a Peace Pole has come to mean that a community is putting down a marker to
· Symbolize the oneness of humanity and our common wish for a world at peace
· Remind us to think, speak and act in the spirit of peace and harmony
· Stand as a silent visual for peace to prevail on earth
Doesn’t this make you want to have a Peace Pole in our own community, here in Staten Island? Like so many places, we have suffered from violence, from glorifying violence, from a lack of understanding between religions, from being part of a nation at war. We are looking for change.
Today we fulfill this wish of putting down our own marker, our own silent pole, a reminder of our potential – a Peace Pole that is traveling around to 18 places of worship on Staten Island and will find its permanent home at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal on August 28th, 2 weeks before the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center.
In this way we become part of a movement of healing that is long overdue and needs to deepen and grow in our own community here on Staten Island.
Chalice lighting Gandhi Peace Prayer led by Unitarian Church of Staten Island youth
Gandhi Peace Greeting
“I offer you peace.
I offer you friendship.
I offer you love.
I see your beauty.
I hear your needs.
I feel your feelings.
My wisdom comes from within and without.
I honor that wisdom in you.
Let us work together.”
Installation of the Peace Pole:
No matter what language we speak,
There is a desire for peace in the human heart.
This Peace Pole, a symbol of that yearning,
Written in eight languages—Arabic, English, Hebrew, Hindi,
Italian, Mandarin, Russian and Spanish,
The words, “May Peace Prevail on Earth”
Echo the deepest strivings of the religions of the world;
Indeed of all the people of the world.
As we install the Peace Pole,
We bring our greatest hopes for
Understanding and cooperation between the people
Of this church
and our Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist
brothers and sisters on Staten Island;
between those who have different customs and cultures;
those who immigrated from distant lands
and those who have lived here since birth
or came in recent years.
May the presence of this Peace Pole in this church
Renew our commitment to build the Beloved Community
And to grow the spirit of peace within our hearts,
This church family and all the communities of Staten Island.
Will our youth please come forward and install the Peace Pole?
Installation of the Peace Pole
Closing Prayer to the Installation Ceremony
Spirit of Life, God of many names,
We take a moment to rest in
The peace and quiet of this sanctuary.
To realize how we are connected in this world
To those who worship in temples, cathedrals, mosques,
Or sanctuaries,
In homes, nature, lodges, under the open skies.
We are human beings, capable of great love and compassion,
Who also forget our common birthright
In the flash it takes to lash out, to wound, to scar.
Today as we join together for worship,
We are filled with the hope and joy
Born of the one earth we share and
The fragile lives of all beings entrusted to our care.
Spirit of life and love,
Let the words on this Peace Pole
Be our prayer, our mantra,
Our invocation—during these next two weeks
And for the duration of our time upon this Earth.
We lift our prayers for world peace in the languages on this Peace Pole:
hu ping (heping), mir, Peace, Paz, Pace, Salaam, Shalom, Shanthi.
May Peace Prevail on Earth
© Rev. Susan Karlson
May 22, 2011
It’s good to have you join us today. It could have been a lonely place here if you all were swept up in the Rapture or maybe the pews would have been full —who knows.
Yesterday, Sally Jones, the social justice co chair, and I attended mass at Our Lady of Good Counsel at the invitation of their new priest, Father Liam O’Doherty. Father Liam described a chat he and I had at our monthly Staten Island Clergy Leadership meeting where we were planning how we would transfer the Peace Pole from his church to ours during the mass. Another clergy member asked when and where we would be meeting. When Father Liam told him the mass was at 5 pm on Saturday the 21st at Our Lady of Good Counsel and it would last about an hour he told us that we were in the worst possible place at that hour on that date—for when the earthquake strikes that signals the beginning of the end, and the last place you want to be is at a church or any kind of house of worship. Well, we made it and so did you!
Today is a joyful day—installing this Peace Pole is a huge passage for us. It signals that we are part of a wider community here on Staten Island, that we are not alone even though we may feel very different at times than other faith groups.
When I first came to Staten Island, some of my clergy colleagues on Staten Island suggested I join the Building Bridges Coalition, an interfaith group that many of them had already joined.
The Building Bridges Coalition was formed in 2003 to promote dialogue and foster greater understanding and peace among the various faith communities on Staten Island. The Unitarian Church of Staten Island has been involved with Building Bridges since fall of 2008 after I learned about the Coalition. That first year a number of members went to the Thanksgiving service, some people singing in the interfaith choir. The choir did a moving rendition of Spirit of Life at the suggestion of one of our members. It was an incredible worship service with phenomenal music, readings and prayers representative of the various faiths.
Several of our members have been active the last two years on the Youth Unity Project which is open to all youth from grades 6 to 12 who want to submit posters, art, dvd’s, poems or essays on the chosen theme. Carol Lodato and I have served as judges for the contest. Since 2010, Building Bridges has partnered with the Temple of Understanding, a United Nations non- governmental organization for high school students working on completing Interfaith Dialogue and Education Action training (acronym, IDEA). The awards were given recently to winning entries and everyone received acknowledgment.
Besides the Youth Unity Project and the Thanksgiving worship service Building Bridges sponsors an interfaith Seder in March or April and a Respecting Differences Program where participants walk to two or three different houses of worship with events planned at each location.
This past year, the Board voted to become an official partner of the Building Bridges Coalition. The Building Bridges website has a link to our website and we now have a link to theirs. Our participation in the Peace Pole Project is the first event we’ve participated in as a church and so, this will mark a significant moment in our church history. I hope that many of you can join me for the Building Bridges walk on Sunday, August 28th from St. Peter’s Catholic Church to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal where this Peace Pole will be permanently installed, as Sally said, just two weeks before the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
There are many aspects of ministry that I love—one is the personal relationships built over the course of a person or family’s life cycle-- the weddings, child dedications, blessings and celebrations of life we hold as a religious community. Interfaith work is another aspect that I find deeply significant. For all that we stand for and signify as a singular faith community, our strength lies in the connections we forge with others; what we can do when we come together to promote peace and healing and recognize in those outside our walls, a kindred spirit.
This congregation is filled to overflowing with people that do good work out in the community. I have never seen so many people in one church who do such viable and much needed community work. We are teachers, actors, playwrights, therapists, community organizers entrusted with the care, nurture and protection of our children and seniors, slogging away day after day at healing abusive relationships, correcting inequities in employment and caring for the most vulnerable and forsaken.
Making peace is not only about global concerns. Peacemaking is righting those relationships that have gone sour. It’s reconciling when we’ve slighted someone or made unfair assumptions or have regrets too big for our hearts and conscience to hold. It’s doing the work of “Building Bridges” of mutual trust and understanding, moving past the stereotypes about someone from a certain religion, culture, race, or ethnicity. It is expressed by this Peace Pole with its eight different languages and the vision of Masahisa Goi who could not bear to be passive in this world of the atom bomb. It’s the look in Father Liam’s eyes when he shared that about fifty of the people he buried during his ministry in Nagasaki in the 1980s. These were people whose cancer and leukemia deaths were the delayed result of nuclear exposure after the 1945 bomb.
This Peace Pole is a symbol of our commitment to peace—peace inside, peace amongst all the beings that share this earth, peace within our families where our peace-able-ness is sometimes most tested.
Peace is a small word in most languages—huping, mir, pace, paz, peace, salaam, shalom, or shanthi. So often it is just a cliché –like the perfect answer for a beauty pageant contestant –“I believe in world peace.” Your dedication of this Peace Pole is not a cliché. It represents an integral part of living your faith. Your faith is not placed in the reward of Rapture but in the everyday healing acts that you perform, believing that you are, in frequent, small, often-unheralded ways, making peace on Earth. You will prevail in those efforts. The keynote speaker at the Metro New York annual meeting, the Rev. Dr. Mark Morrison-Reed, told us that we could have absolute confidence in this statement made by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker before him, when they said that the moral arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice. Peace will prevail on earth.
May you continue to find the courage and the resolve to repeat this meditation, this prayer during your waking life. May Peace Prevail on Earth. May Peace Prevail on Earth. May Peace Prevail on Earth.
The word Amen often signifies a blessing or means “so be it”. So be it—may peace prevail on earth. Could I hear an Amen?
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
“Light One Candle”
*This sermon incorporates materialI learned from a conversation with my dear colleagues, Rabbis Judah Newberger and Rabbi Gerald Sussman. I waited to post it till I had their permission to do so.
© Rev. Susan Karlson
December 5, 2010
At an interfaith clergy meeting last week, we talked about the holidays approaching and wished the rabbis among us a “Happy Chanukah” though we understood that Chanukah was really a relatively minor holiday. One of the rabbis responded, “Well, it’s really a minor major holiday.”
I reflected on his response and got very curious—particularly as I had just told my daughter, whose father is Jewish, that Chanukah was not such a big deal in Judaism. Her response was that Chanukah was always the most meaningful celebration to her.
So Rabbis Newberger and Sussman made time this week to talk to me about Chanukah and what it means to them and their congregations and what it might mean to non-Jews. This is part of a growing understanding and deepening I have found among a number of clergy that get together here. In this relatively conservative borough I have found that the clergy active in interfaith dialogue and community action are very responsive.
This is some of what they told me. Chanukah has largely become a children’s holiday. It is not biblically based—there is no mention of Chanukah or its celebration in the Torah. For those reasons, it is a minor celebration. Deciphering what Chanukah means to contemporary Jews must be set in context. To both Rabbis Sussman and Newberger, there would be no Jewish religion or no Jewish people without Chanukah—so this minor holiday is a true “turning point” holiday.
What do they mean by that? Though there are no references in the Torah to the Chanukah stories, there are references in the apochryphal books, Macabees I and II, to the Maccabee family and the radical notion of resistance to assimilation.
Alexander and his successors were Greco-Syrians who ruled over what is now most of the Middle East. Religious persecution was rare in the ancient world. Different religions co-existed—each worshiped as they saw fit as long as they were politically obedient. There was a tacit tolerance of religious pluralism. When Antiochus IV came on the scene, however, that changed. He wanted regions to become Greek city-states and along with that came a vision to conflate religious worship and politics. Many of the Jewish city priests went along with this Hellenization but the country priests, the Maccabees among them, resisted.
This small band of country folk took on the Greek empire and somehow, they won. Theirs is an awesome story of a huge victory won by oppressed people but the story doesn’t end there and as in the wider Thanksgiving story I shared several weeks ago, we need to know the whole story. Ironically, the Maccabees’ descendants forced others to convert to Judaism, the only time in 3000 years of Jewish history according to my colleagues. They ruled by the sword, becoming corrupt and despotic, cruel and arrogant. Most of what is written about the Maccabees is negative and is a cautionary tale for Jews. Partly because of the corruption of this family, the legend was recast to emphasize God’s providing the miracle of the light burning for eight days when there was only enough oil for one day.
Reflecting on Chanukah as a “minor, major holiday” raises other thoughts about Chanukah’s significance for those who aren’t practicing Jews. There are many battles in this country today—which ones are worth fighting?
Here in Staten Island and across much of the nation, Muslims are defending their freedom to practice their religion amidst grave generalizations and misunderstandings about what it means to be a Muslim. In a climate of fear and vulnerability, it is difficult to practice religious tolerance and freedom. Stereotyping and innuendo often accompany anxiety—they are our default position when we don’t engage in dialogue and interaction with one another. Lighting one candle of connection and building relationships between us is a start. Passing the light from candle to candle in a community changes everything.
The story of Chanukah brings up a “thin line” dilemma. There is a kind of tightrope we walk between feeling comfortable within our own community and moving outside of it. We need to feel close to one another, to feel that here are a people that make us feel at home, that care what happens to us and that share certain common bonds. We need to care for one another—that’s what congregations do, that’s part of being in a religious community. Yet we also need to move beyond our close-knit circle—to step out into relationship with others from different faiths and dialogue with them and work together on issues central to us all. That’s part of building community with the Building Bridges Coalition and I Am Staten Island. That is imperative for a deeper spiritual understanding and being a truth seeker.
The other day, the president of this congregation and I had a conversation with the co-chairs of the Social Justice Committee about the direction of that newly reinvigorated committee. We talked about the importance of communicating what people are doing as individuals as well as acting together collectively. This congregation has always been a leader in providing educational forums and articulating issues to be addressed. As Unitarian Universalists, we excel at discussion and talk. Collectively, by and large, we are also generous and we give of our time, talent and our treasure.
My observation is that it is a little harder for us to build ongoing relationships or partnerships with other faiths or organizations—to ask how we might work together, whether it’s the problem with the environmental racism connected to the sanitation garage, with addressing and eradicating homelessness and hunger or with immigrant, gay or Muslim bashing, to name just a few.
The rabbis said that Chanukah brings up questions revolving around the customs and traditions of their ancestors and whether contemporary Judaism is selling them out. All religions grapple with honoring the practices and traditions of their predecessors while responding in new ways to new conditions.
You see, the conversation with my Jewish colleagues was helpful in understanding that these are choices we all face. How much do we value those who founded this church, those who supported it through gifts they left so that we can still meet here today; and do we praise or curse those who started the Jolly Holly Fair that we just held yesterday for 150+ consecutive years (since it involves so much work and preparation but is so successful)? How much do we determine our spiritual path and religious exploration based on the tendencies and beliefs of former and long time members? And what of those who join us now—are we still evolving as a dynamic, living organism? Do we adhere to customs and traditions without being aware of their deeper significance or do we throw them out without thinking about the implications? How do we speak about the deepest yearnings in our hearts when each of us has different needs embedded in our souls?
I don’t have an answer to these questions but in good Jewish fashion, I do have a story that speaks to these ponderings told to me by Rabbi Sussman. In mid-nineteenth century Russia, there was a law mandating recruits for the military serve twenty years. Some children were taken as cadets at the tender age of seven or eight. Often, kidnappers stole children to meet the quotas. Parents and families lost their children—many never seeing one another again.
The story goes that one young lad was kidnapped. Years went by. His parents had no word about him or from him. They still hoped one day that their son would return but this was really only a tiny ember—nothing in their existence kindled that small but steady flame.
You know that the Russian winters can be so very cold. One night a soldier was lost in the forest, freezing from the bitter cold. The light of a flickering candle in the window caught his eye. He went to the door and begged to come in and warm himself. Eventually, he realized that these people who welcomed him in were his parents and they were reunited. The glow of one small candle in the darkness led to their reunion and to his rediscovery of his Jewish roots.
Each of us only has to light one candle, to nurture that flame, to keep it going. We never know what results that light will have. We never know who might be attracted to that light, who might find their way home, who might be stirred by the example of our small, steady flame. And yet if we light one candle and join our candle to another and to another, then soon the darkness turns to light, the cold dissipates and our separate and mutual paths are illumined. May we light one candle and nurse that light with our entire being, with all that we have and all that we are. May your light grow stronger, brighter, and more true in this season.
© Rev. Susan Karlson
December 5, 2010
At an interfaith clergy meeting last week, we talked about the holidays approaching and wished the rabbis among us a “Happy Chanukah” though we understood that Chanukah was really a relatively minor holiday. One of the rabbis responded, “Well, it’s really a minor major holiday.”
I reflected on his response and got very curious—particularly as I had just told my daughter, whose father is Jewish, that Chanukah was not such a big deal in Judaism. Her response was that Chanukah was always the most meaningful celebration to her.
So Rabbis Newberger and Sussman made time this week to talk to me about Chanukah and what it means to them and their congregations and what it might mean to non-Jews. This is part of a growing understanding and deepening I have found among a number of clergy that get together here. In this relatively conservative borough I have found that the clergy active in interfaith dialogue and community action are very responsive.
This is some of what they told me. Chanukah has largely become a children’s holiday. It is not biblically based—there is no mention of Chanukah or its celebration in the Torah. For those reasons, it is a minor celebration. Deciphering what Chanukah means to contemporary Jews must be set in context. To both Rabbis Sussman and Newberger, there would be no Jewish religion or no Jewish people without Chanukah—so this minor holiday is a true “turning point” holiday.
What do they mean by that? Though there are no references in the Torah to the Chanukah stories, there are references in the apochryphal books, Macabees I and II, to the Maccabee family and the radical notion of resistance to assimilation.
Alexander and his successors were Greco-Syrians who ruled over what is now most of the Middle East. Religious persecution was rare in the ancient world. Different religions co-existed—each worshiped as they saw fit as long as they were politically obedient. There was a tacit tolerance of religious pluralism. When Antiochus IV came on the scene, however, that changed. He wanted regions to become Greek city-states and along with that came a vision to conflate religious worship and politics. Many of the Jewish city priests went along with this Hellenization but the country priests, the Maccabees among them, resisted.
This small band of country folk took on the Greek empire and somehow, they won. Theirs is an awesome story of a huge victory won by oppressed people but the story doesn’t end there and as in the wider Thanksgiving story I shared several weeks ago, we need to know the whole story. Ironically, the Maccabees’ descendants forced others to convert to Judaism, the only time in 3000 years of Jewish history according to my colleagues. They ruled by the sword, becoming corrupt and despotic, cruel and arrogant. Most of what is written about the Maccabees is negative and is a cautionary tale for Jews. Partly because of the corruption of this family, the legend was recast to emphasize God’s providing the miracle of the light burning for eight days when there was only enough oil for one day.
Reflecting on Chanukah as a “minor, major holiday” raises other thoughts about Chanukah’s significance for those who aren’t practicing Jews. There are many battles in this country today—which ones are worth fighting?
Here in Staten Island and across much of the nation, Muslims are defending their freedom to practice their religion amidst grave generalizations and misunderstandings about what it means to be a Muslim. In a climate of fear and vulnerability, it is difficult to practice religious tolerance and freedom. Stereotyping and innuendo often accompany anxiety—they are our default position when we don’t engage in dialogue and interaction with one another. Lighting one candle of connection and building relationships between us is a start. Passing the light from candle to candle in a community changes everything.
The story of Chanukah brings up a “thin line” dilemma. There is a kind of tightrope we walk between feeling comfortable within our own community and moving outside of it. We need to feel close to one another, to feel that here are a people that make us feel at home, that care what happens to us and that share certain common bonds. We need to care for one another—that’s what congregations do, that’s part of being in a religious community. Yet we also need to move beyond our close-knit circle—to step out into relationship with others from different faiths and dialogue with them and work together on issues central to us all. That’s part of building community with the Building Bridges Coalition and I Am Staten Island. That is imperative for a deeper spiritual understanding and being a truth seeker.
The other day, the president of this congregation and I had a conversation with the co-chairs of the Social Justice Committee about the direction of that newly reinvigorated committee. We talked about the importance of communicating what people are doing as individuals as well as acting together collectively. This congregation has always been a leader in providing educational forums and articulating issues to be addressed. As Unitarian Universalists, we excel at discussion and talk. Collectively, by and large, we are also generous and we give of our time, talent and our treasure.
My observation is that it is a little harder for us to build ongoing relationships or partnerships with other faiths or organizations—to ask how we might work together, whether it’s the problem with the environmental racism connected to the sanitation garage, with addressing and eradicating homelessness and hunger or with immigrant, gay or Muslim bashing, to name just a few.
The rabbis said that Chanukah brings up questions revolving around the customs and traditions of their ancestors and whether contemporary Judaism is selling them out. All religions grapple with honoring the practices and traditions of their predecessors while responding in new ways to new conditions.
You see, the conversation with my Jewish colleagues was helpful in understanding that these are choices we all face. How much do we value those who founded this church, those who supported it through gifts they left so that we can still meet here today; and do we praise or curse those who started the Jolly Holly Fair that we just held yesterday for 150+ consecutive years (since it involves so much work and preparation but is so successful)? How much do we determine our spiritual path and religious exploration based on the tendencies and beliefs of former and long time members? And what of those who join us now—are we still evolving as a dynamic, living organism? Do we adhere to customs and traditions without being aware of their deeper significance or do we throw them out without thinking about the implications? How do we speak about the deepest yearnings in our hearts when each of us has different needs embedded in our souls?
I don’t have an answer to these questions but in good Jewish fashion, I do have a story that speaks to these ponderings told to me by Rabbi Sussman. In mid-nineteenth century Russia, there was a law mandating recruits for the military serve twenty years. Some children were taken as cadets at the tender age of seven or eight. Often, kidnappers stole children to meet the quotas. Parents and families lost their children—many never seeing one another again.
The story goes that one young lad was kidnapped. Years went by. His parents had no word about him or from him. They still hoped one day that their son would return but this was really only a tiny ember—nothing in their existence kindled that small but steady flame.
You know that the Russian winters can be so very cold. One night a soldier was lost in the forest, freezing from the bitter cold. The light of a flickering candle in the window caught his eye. He went to the door and begged to come in and warm himself. Eventually, he realized that these people who welcomed him in were his parents and they were reunited. The glow of one small candle in the darkness led to their reunion and to his rediscovery of his Jewish roots.
Each of us only has to light one candle, to nurture that flame, to keep it going. We never know what results that light will have. We never know who might be attracted to that light, who might find their way home, who might be stirred by the example of our small, steady flame. And yet if we light one candle and join our candle to another and to another, then soon the darkness turns to light, the cold dissipates and our separate and mutual paths are illumined. May we light one candle and nurse that light with our entire being, with all that we have and all that we are. May your light grow stronger, brighter, and more true in this season.
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