{"id":2855,"date":"2021-02-16T17:21:20","date_gmt":"2021-02-16T17:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=2855"},"modified":"2021-02-16T17:21:35","modified_gmt":"2021-02-16T17:21:35","slug":"candles-in-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2021\/02\/16\/candles-in-the-dark\/","title":{"rendered":"Candles in the Dark"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Loving on Thursdays<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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A trauma chaplain in New Orleans resonates with Rowan Williams\u2019s reflections on loving our neighbors in the midst of the pandemic.
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Review by Hillary Bylund
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How do we sing the Lord\u2019s song in a strange land? In Candles in the Dark: Faith, Hope and Love in a Time of Pandemic<\/em>, Rowan Williams draws answers to this ancient question from his daily life in quarantine during the first six months of the pandemic in the United Kingdom. One of the first chapters contains his musings on humanity\u2019s relationship with creation\u2014thoughts triggered by the night sky\u2019s clarity observed while completing his evening chore of emptying the trash bin. In a later entry, Williams watches \u201cthe poison of privilege\u201d play out in televised scenes of America\u2019s president using the military to clear a path for a Bible-wielding photo-op. He points out that \u201cthe story that began in Mary\u2019s body… is a story that has begun in us… whether or not we see the signs of its presence in the ways we\u2019ve got used to.\u201d There is hope in God\u2019s loving and faithful presence beyond and<\/em> through this time of pandemic.<\/p>

Covid-19 called many of us to reassess just how far we are willing to take the command to \u201clove your neighbor.\u201d Quoting W. H. Auden, (\u201cIt was easy enough to say \u2018I will love you forever\u2019; the difficult thing was to say (and mean), \u2018I will love you at 4.15 next Thursday.\u2019\u201d), Williams encourages his congregation to consider the continued loving presence of Christ in their midst even\u2014and especially\u2014when they are unable to gather together in worship in traditional ways. As someone who rarely wears makeup, jewelry, or turtleneck sweaters because I hate the feeling of having things near my face, learning that wearing a mask would not only be a professional requirement for me as a hospital chaplain, but also a visible act of neighborly love was… an embarrassingly hard pill for me to swallow. I will never forget watching nurses in head-to-toe PPE willingly brave the southern Louisiana humidity for hours while they worked to make sure every person in their neighborhood had access to testing. Showing up to a shift at 7 a.m. knowing that you will be bathed in sweat within ten minutes\u2014risking your own health for the health of your community\u2014that\u2019s what love looks like on a Thursday. \u00a0<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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I still found myself resonating profoundly with the narrative of divine presence through transition and the unknown that undergirds the whole of this work.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Because the pandemic forced many of our in-person services, conversations, and relationships to virtual spaces, it also distilled many of these activities into their most basic forms\u2014often in surprising ways. Thinking back to my own Easter celebration, sitting on my bedroom floor (where the lighting was the best and the background the clearest\u2014back when I used to care about those things) and holding my own bread and wine up for the Zoom blessing, I agree with Williams that the necessity of a virtual eucharistic blessing pushed me to engage deeper and with more intention with my physical worship practices.<\/p>

Williams wrote these entries not just during the first six months of his country\u2019s experience of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also during the last six months of his transition to retirement and subsequent move to Wales in September 2020. As a trauma chaplain working in New Orleans\u2014a Covid-19 hotspot early on\u2014my experience of the first six months of the pandemic was dramatically different than Williams\u2019s. The same weeks he meditated on the spiritual lessons of packing up books, my team was struggling to fit a growing number of bodies into our already overflowing morgue. I affirm with Williams that \u201cthere is nowhere and no-when that is simply waste because the living Jesus is present and active wherever we turn,\u201d but I struggled to connect with the stories of his quarantine experiences. However, I still found myself resonating profoundly with the narrative of divine presence through transition and the unknown that undergirds the whole of this work. His overlapping contexts of personal, professional, and global upheaval will likely allow readers to resonate with his reflections even though they are, for the most part, quite concerned with the concrete and particular experience of Williams and the local St. Clements congregation who was their original intended audience.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

The first chapter of Candles in the Dark<\/em> marks the beginning of social distancing in the U.K., and the last the ambiguous middle period of pandemic-time, one which many countries are still very much in the midst of almost a year later. I began Candles in the Dark<\/em> the day after receiving my first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, and I am writing this review the week I received my second dose. While I now feel much less under direct physical threat, I am still concerned about the physical health of my loved ones, the still unfolding economic consequences, and what the emergence of new virus variants might mean for whatever \u201cnormal\u201d is going to be. Being drawn back through Williams\u2019s spiritual reflections on the early days of the pandemic to my own memories energizes me insofar as it reminds me of how far we\u2019ve come, how amazing our capacity is to adapt to the unknown\u2014and the surprising ways that God provides answers to questions we don\u2019t even know to ask.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Hillary Bylund<\/strong> is a trauma chaplain and theological ethicist from Corvallis, Oregon. The cinnamon and cedar candle from Thistle Farms is her absolute favorite.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>

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Candles in the Dark <\/strong>was released by SPCK Publishing on February 9, 2021. <\/em>Fare Forward thanks them for providing our reviewer with a copy of the book. You can purchase a copy from the publisher here<\/a>.
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A trauma chaplain in New Orleans resonates with Rowan Williams\u2019s reflections on loving our neighbors in the midst of the pandemic. 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