[25 SAFE EXPERIENTIAL PRAYER EXERCISES]  
 
two: lighting a candle
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  During weekly services with resonance (an alternative worship group in Bristol, England) we practice lighting votive candles to symbolise a particular prayer. My friend Jean sometimes gives the half-burned candle to the person she has prayed for. Occasionally I walk to a special Thin Place in Bristol (a city centre church) to light a 24-hour candle when I want to emphasise how important a particular prayer is.  

Votive candles
St. David's Cathedral, Wales

1: Any suitable candle will do, but at home I use large church candles, or blue candles when I can find them, as blue is a holy colour for me.

2: Light the candle and pray a simple prayer. The Sunday evening office from Celebrating Common Prayer uses these words as the candle is lit:

You, O Lord, are my lamp;
you turn our darkness into light.

And from the office for Friday:

Christ your light shall rise in the darkness
and your healing shall spring up like the dawn.

The Iona Community Worship Book uses these words when lighting three candles:

We will light three lights for the trinity of love:
God above us,
God beside us,
God beneath us:
The beginning, the end the everlasting one.

3: My Mother lights a candle every evening for something she has seen on the news or for someone she knows. When she blows the candle out she "sends the light" to the person or situation.

  
   
 
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