(This post originally appeared in December 2018, but it, like some of the symbols of this season, is evergreen. While things swirl, challenge, and change around us, we find grounding and solace (and sometimes new insight) in the “through-line” or Golden Thread. As always, wishing you well in this Season of Lights 2021).

Yes, it is the Season of Lights celebrated over many generations in various cultural and spiritual traditions, with candles, lamps, and little (or big) sparklies shining from mini ‘World Trees’ (a.k.a. Christmas and Yule Trees), wreaths, and around doorways and windows.

Those little lights bring to mind the Divine Spark mentioned in quite a few of those traditions — the Divine Heart-Spark that resides within, from, and all around us, along with the actual return of the light at the Winter Solstice for folks in the Northern Hemisphere on Planet Earth.

This Ken Nerburn reflection is a favorite reminder of just how welcome a beacon our seemingly little Divine Spark can be:

“We are not saints, we are not heroes. Our lives are lived in the quiet corners of the ordinary. We build tiny hearth fires, sometimes barely strong enough to give off warmth.

But to the person lost in the darkness, our tiny flame may be the road to safety, the path to salvation.

It is not given us to know who is lost in the darkness that surrounds us or even if our light is seen. We can only know that against even the smallest of lights, darkness cannot stand.

A sailor lost at sea can be guided home by a single candle. A person lost in a wood can be led to safety by a flickering flame. It is not an issue of quality or intensity or purity. It is simply an issue of the presence of light.”

~ Kent Nerburn, Educator, and Author of Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace: Living in the Spirit of the Prayer of Saint Francis.

Lighthouse with lights blazing. ONTARS lighthouse directory website.

What if …

What if honoring and tending this Divine Spark — the ‘little light’ (or bonfire!) within — was our most vital and true purpose because it allowed that light to express itself in all of the other ways?

What if, with our inner-flames well tended, each of us becomes (or is) the lighthouse, tiny flame, flickering flame, candle that provides a type of sanctuary and guides others home?

What if its warmth, expressed through us, rippled out as welcome and kindness that could change the trajectory of a person’s (or other being’s) day … or life?

When might we have experienced or witnessed just this kind of kindness from someone else, just when we needed it most?

It’s the Season of Divine Spark reflections, so that our Heart Spark might shine all the more brightly.

Who could possible do This Little Light of Mine better than Bruce and Co? It’s rockin’ …

More to Stir Your Holy Days Inspiration & Light Your Spark

• Holy Days. Holy Ground.

• Some Ancestral Roots (and Inspiration) of our Season of Lights

Big Love, Happy Christmas and Holy Days, and Let Your Little Light shine!

Jamie

Featured Image Credit: Let Your Divine-Spark Heart Light & Shine! PD pic from Tao Bao.

Be the Light, Help Illuminate the Way … [Image shared in an e-message from the University of Spiritual Healing and Sufism]
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Lots of love,

Jamie