I love candles. After I clean my house I love to light candles. I even learned to make votive candles so I could burn them alot and never have to consider the cost. I rarely have the time to make my own candles. Plus now Target sells tea lights and votives at unreasonably low prices. I love a house with an abundance of candles lit. They do not have to have any scent. It is the LIGHT I love. The flickering and the movement. A flame is alive and full of something mysterious. It is primal and harkens back to something ancient. There is something significant in the light radiating from a candle as opposed to the light emitted from a lamp.
I light candles as devotionals. It is not simply at church either. When I light a candle, I often make a silent prayer for someone that has left this word. I pray for my family members and their souls. I hope that each of those that have passed ahead of me leaves this world with a clean conscience and has been absolved of all sin, but for anyone meandering around in purgatory, I pray for them. I also pray for the person next in line at the door from purgatory into heaven. What if everyone that knew them in this world is now also gone….who prays for them? I pray for those lost and wandering souls. I pray that they receive the perfect Grace and step into paradise cleansed of all their past.
I light candles to honor someone. If I have someone on my mind and I am praying for them, I light a candle for them, usually in a location that I can easy see. When my eyes fall upon the candle, I repeat my prayers in their honor. I lift them up and make my petitions in their name.
I light candles for mood. Candles shine upon all those dark places. They cast their own kind of shadows, but they illuminate the deepest recesses inside my heart. Candles are divine.