How's Your Flame?

Just south of where I was born there is a town called Indianola that is famous for its balloon festival. When I was little I would see the balloons drift through the sky. If you've ever seen a mass of things drift in the air you know what sort of hope it inspires in a child's soul. I think that's why I write things. Not the balloons, but what they represent.

There are various lantern festivals all over the world and I think they get at what I'm trying to talk about. People put little candles in boats and float them down a stream. Or they put a candle in a lantern and let the heat from the flame take it into the air. Or they set a paper lantern on fire and it lifts off into the night sky. Thousands upon thousands of these things float into the dark. We do this out of hope, or to celebrate our lives.

This is why I write. Every time I sit down to write I am really setting a candle into a stream. I'm setting a bit of paper on fire with my soul's flame and watching it drift off into the night.

At some time or another everyone confuses the purpose of the festival. We think our lantern should be the grandest flame in the sky, the brightest, the most beautiful, and that our soul will only be magnified for its glory when everyone says it is the the brightest and most beautiful and the grandest one hanging there in the dark, floating down the stream. The flame will still go out. The candle will gutter and flicker and die. The lantern will still come crashing to the ground and nobody will know who set it in the sky or whose soul lit the flame. The point is to light the world, to let our lights shine, and not to be the brightest.

I think I'm getting at what I want to say. It's a hard point to make. The festival is our culture. The lanterns are all the things we make and do and say.  We look at others and think their lanterns are much better than ours. When really it is our task to just light as many lanterns as we can. To make them as well as we can. To light up the night sky. To reflect back to heaven the glory of heaven. To show God we love this world as much God loves this world.

That's why I write. It's the thing I've decided to make my lanterns out of.


I hope your soul is aflame and blazing,

K