This Little Light (A Pre-Christmas Rebellion)

Ahhh… it feels good to be back! I’ve been sitting with the remnants of a message that followed me home from Peru, a message that keeps repeating itself in quieter and quieter ways. Be present. Be aware. Spend more time creating than consuming. It felt simple when I was free of responsibility for 10 days in the Andes mountains, frolicking in the Chakra Gardens of Willka T’ika. But in this season, when everything accelerates and the days begin to feel like a conveyor belt of obligation, to-do lists, and noise, there seems to be little time for anything other than go-go-go mode. And yet this morning, instead of a grand revelation, the invitation arrived as a small electric candle glowing in the dark window.

As many of us do this time of year, we have those little electric candles in each window for the holidays, little stand-ins for the ancient intention of keeping our lamps trimmed and burning. This season, one of them, in the left bedroom window, has developed a peculiar habit of turning on randomly, seemingly on its own. Stirring in the early morning, I blinked open my eyes and saw it there, its warm glow faint against the dark. My mind, still soft and unguarded, offered a song without effort: this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. A quiet act of praise and nod to be the light and the salt of this world.

There were things to do, of course. There always are. With a Christmas party this afternoon, I still had cookies to bake, phyllo pockets to prep, and the final hems and sleeves of the cousin Christmas jammies left to sew. I tried blinking myself back into rest. It was only 5:42. But just 10 minutes later, my body pulled me out of bed and towards the shower. Hmm, how strange, I thought. The candle had already gone out. So much for letting my little light shine.

While I stood under the water, my mind was already calculating shipping dates for mailing out my homemade makeup bags and reverse-engineering the baking timeline, not even conscious of how I washed my hair. My body moved mechanically, on autopilot, while my thoughts raced ahead. When I returned, the candle had come back on again. How playful is our God.

Our rational minds always have a way of denying the mystery. It’s battery-powered afterall. A loose connection, a dying battery. We can always logically explain away the magic. But the body often knows before the mind decides. To me, it felt like an invitation, the glow drawing me toward my desk where my Unbecoming Journal sits, toward stillness, toward writing. So here I am, heeding the call from a candle.

Somewhere along the way, we have forgotten how to listen, how to collaborate with creation itself. We’ve learned to wait for the grand calling, the unmistakable sign, the moment big enough to justify our pause. We’ve lost faith in the small, almost laughably subtle ways guidance speaks. A thought that lingers. A nudge that doesn’t shout, but whispers. A flicker that asks for attention rather than obedience. And so we move quickly past these moments, telling ourselves we’ll slow down later, when the season ends, when the house is quiet again, when life feels more manageable.

But the season we are in does not wait for readiness. Advent was never meant to be rushed through. It was a practice of staying awake, of waiting well, of noticing what was already arriving in the dark. Winter, by design, is bare and interior and trusting. It does not strive to become spring faster, its revels in the cold winds and shorter days that are promised. It invites us into patience, into presence, into the spaces in between.

Lately, my friend got me hooked on the Telepathy Tapes. I’ve been listening to conversations about creative consciousness that put language to something I’ve wondered for a long time. The idea that inspiration doesn’t originate solely inside us, but moves through a shared field, available to any willing participant who is quiet enough to receive it. Ideas are not scarce. Attention is. When we are too busy, too tethered to consumption and urgency, the invitation doesn’t disappear. It simply moves on, finding another steward whose hands (and anttenae) are open.

Creation, as an intelligence, doesn’t cling. It gives. It moves like like itself. Just as seeds germinate where the soil is ready, inspiration settles where awareness has made space. And this principle doesn’t stop with ideas. We’re learning that even plants are communicative, responsive, relational. They signal, adjust, and cooperate constantly. Creation speaks all the time. The tragedy isn’t that God has gone silent. It’s that we are rarely still enough to hear.

The holiday season has its own inertia, a gravitational pull toward productivity disguised as virtue. We tell ourselves that presence can wait, that creativity can be postponed, that we’ll return to ourselves after Christmas. But if we don’t choose awareness now, we won’t magically find it later. Inertia doesn’t resolve itself. It must be interrupted. The recursion broken.

What if the most countercultural thing you could do right now is not one more task, but one small act of creation? Not for profit or posting or permission, but simply because you were invited. To write a page, bake something slowly, build, mend, sing, dance, or sit with a candle (perhaps not an electrical one) long enough to notice what stirs. Not as a means to an end, but as a refusal to believe that your worth is measured by how efficiently you complete December.

We’re often taught that wisdom and virtue must be earned through effort alone, as though this life were a solitary test of endurance. As though guidance were something we had to seek out rather than something that walks with us. But what if that was never the design? What if we are souls having a human experience, yes, here to learn and to grow, but never meant to navigate this incarnation in isolation? What if there are helpers alongside us, spirit guides and unseen companions, and the creative force of Love itself, constantly offering direction, encouragement, and reassurance in ways both subtle and profound?

Perhaps awareness isn’t obedience born of striving, but recognition. The candle didn’t demand anything of me. It didn’t explain itself. It simply returned, again and again, glowing patiently in the dark until I chose to let my to-do list simmer and instead sit in a defiant act of stillness, journaling. Maybe that is how guidance most often works, not by commanding us forward, but by walking beside us, faithfully illuminating the next small step.

This calls a Psalm to my mind:

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” // Psalm 119:105

Not a floodlight. Not a map of the whole terrain. A lampstand. Enough light for the next step. Enough presence to keep moving without knowing everything.

This season doesn’t need us flashier, busier or more impressive. It needs us conscious. It needs us willing to resist the rush long enough to witness the quiet miracle unfolding right where we are. Don’t lose your season to an unending list of tasks. Don’t miss the moments in between while waiting for the grand finale. You’ve already done enough.

So let this be the moment you choose to create rather than consume, to listen rather than scroll, to honor the small light that keeps turning on, peculiarly yet patiently, in the dark.

Thank you, little Light. I’m gonna let you shine.

In love + light,
April