I spend a lot of my week thinking. In these years my thoughts are constantly pulled towards commodity as I share on various platforms. Part of me has accepted this. Part of me actively resists it. Being in academia for me means that there is ego always waiting at the door. Tempting me to assert my views over others. Tempting me to measure my brilliance against others. It is exhausting beyond belief and I attempt to reject this self-exaltation at every turn.
My candle collection aids me in this journey of resistance. I take pride in the variety of scents and shapes that my candles come in…they are like Pokemon…gotta catch ‘em all. Lighting a candle daily (let’s be serious multiple times a day) helps to center me in simplicity. Despite all the books I am reading, the research that I do, and the issues that I must analyze, I feel an ease set in as I sit down to enjoy the scent of a candle. (If you’re wondering, I have a Sweater Weather candle burning.) I grew up in an environment that didn’t allow for luxuries such as candles. It is something extravagant that grounds me in my desires and my humanity. I am not all work and neither do I have to have all of the answers. Candles remind me that there is more to life than utility and production. That stopping to enjoy a pleasing aroma is as important as the other things that I must accomplish in a day.
“We make a sacrament of our determination to be better tomorrow than we are today, to be more thoughtful of our own needs and the needs of others, to be more gracious in the way we live, to the end that through us there shall come no violence to anyone; through no word of ours shall there be a heart broken, or a spirit injured.”
Howard Thurman
So…I am sitting here. Enjoying the sunshine streaming into my room and enjoying this candle. Cognizant of how the simple ritual of lighting one has taught me to be a man that loves life. I take immense inspiration in the testimony of my hero, Howard Thurman. He talked often about the ways that he would find God in the forest or different parts of his day. The mundane can be the very place of encounter with ourselves and with God. Below are just a few of the lessons that have been whispered to me through this ritual.
Pleasure is central to my joy.
I am not indefinite. I have limits.
Slow down pal. Breathe.
Simple can be greater than complexity.
Beautiful. I also seek God in the “little” things, my turtle basking in the sun, the light from the sun shining on my table in the morning. I believe that these little acts are ways of living out what it means to be a child of God. It is an act of defiance against finding worth in productivity and achievement.
"self-exaltation " - I inadvertent read this as self-isolation, but my feeling is this is what self-exaltation does...if we do it, we isolate ourselves from the rest of humanity.