Sarx

SEEM to remember somewhere (back in my convert days) reading an essay on why the lights in Orthodox Churches should be Oil Lamps if possible, beeswax where candles were needed. Paraffin could be used where needed, but it wasn’t as clean as beeswax, electricity was right out: the lights represent a sacrifice. The essay was the source of my consternation in finding candles in my roommate’s icon corner… and later in churches. I got over my convert issue in this area after a while.

Of course, with the invention of the new electric light, at the turn of the last century churches everywhere were decked out with exposed bulbs as a sign of festive enjoyment and glorious opulence. The Cathedral in SF has such an arrangement – bulbs lining all the arches with light like on a carousel. It does look tacky, I have to admit, but it is glorious as well: light floods the Cathedral on Pascha and at other times. I’ve seen other OCA churches and even a synagogue from the same time that also has the New Electric Light filling the space.

We’ve evolved odd aesthetic ideas about “spiritual” lighting and how things need to look to “feel” holy. I remember once complaining that the light over the pews at Smokey Mary’s in NYC was a bit too dark for reading – and we gave visitors a LOT to read: BCP, Hymnal, a service booklet covering all of St Mary’s additions to the BCP as well as a weekly insert with all the Bible readings and the psalms of the day. Navigating between all those publications was hard enough without having to do it in the dark! But when I shared my comment with the then-assistant I was told that a sizable donation had recently been made to improve the lighting just to that end. And it was vetoed by the vestry. (This was in the mid-to-late 1980s.) I remember many Sundays there when the Altar and the Pulpit seemed to float like lighted islands in a dark sea. And when I was serving on the Altar it was rather blinding moving around in all the floodlight, on the white marble!

The rubrics in the old New Skete prayerbook (now out of print) directed for services to being “with the natural light in the temple”. To this light candles are added.

My favourite services in Orthodoxy are the evening ones – Vespers, the Presanctified liturgy, etc. The quiet glow of the candles on the gold of the icons creates its own sensation of holiness. I cannot help but imagine: the reason the “darkness” works in Orthodoxy but not in Anglicanism is because the latter expects its congregants to read and rather a lot. The former, in the places where I experienced it, OCA, Antiochian and Greek, expects them to sing from memory; to be silent until the melodies are learned, then hum along, then sing. (The Choir is different in this context – and often has a lighted area, sheet music etc: they are the worship leaders from whom everyone else is learning.) I remember the amused smile I was given when I asked (on my second or third Sunday) for a liturgy book or whatever, to follow along at the OCA Cathedral. In our Antiochian parish, even though there were books available, few used them outside of the choir and visitors. Most stood and sang along, as they were able. The same was true at the Monastery in Asheville, although sometimes they provided a book and a music stand for people who wanted to sing along with the Monks.

To be certain, low lighting, as pleasing as it is, is not a theological concept, let’s leave that thought for the converts. In some places the vespers service requires that the candelabra in the dome be lit and then spun around. This creates the visual effect of seeing the icons dance! (Mediaeval Multimedia Worship!) Outside of some old-country Monasteries, very few churches do this – or take the time to light and extinguish the candles, let alone spin them and watch. In places where the light is used liturgically during Vespers, it has to do with images of the light streaming from the tomb at the resurrection, etc. The lights are simply turned on or off. In SF, the holy doors open, the lights come on. “Click!”. Close ‘em and off they go. “Click!” (It’s done manually by the man in the candle stand.) It’s a bit jarring, but I got used to it. At Pascha there are two clicks as the festive “carousel lights” come on. Again, the choice for old-style candles or new-style electricity makes no never-mind theologically speaking, and I think we can all imagine the joy that some monastic light-keeper must have felt when he realised he’d not have to use a ten-foot pole in the middle of vespers ever again!

The Cathedral in SF, in addition to using electric lights also had small bottles of candle oil in the hanging lamps. This disabused another fragment of convert piety: that only “Modernists” do such things. Every Sunday the Reader Robert would top ‘em off with a small funnel and a pump. These lights burned much clearer with this liquid paraffin than olive oil lamps. And no one seemed to care.

When I worked at the Episcopal Church Center I would sometimes visit St Agnes Church, around the corner, for noon-day mass. The walls of the church were lined with statues and, before each statue, votive lights. At St Agnes, the votive lights were electric. Drop a quarter in the slot and a small electric “flame” would appear in a red jar. It would burn for a while and then “go out”. How is this different from using electric lights to replace the candelabra? If one pays a quarter to light a small votive lamp, what happens if one pays a quarter to light the image of a votive lamp for the same amount of time?

In my own world, now, I’ve begun to explore not only wax (which light is as kind and gentle as oil) but also LED lights. Specifically, LED Candles which combine both the flicker, warmth and colour of “real candles”

I’m also thinking about investing in a set of these from OXO from which to fashion the seven-branch candlestick that stands at the altar. I’ve seen churches without it, and I’ve seen them standing at other places in the church. Such modernism, of course, runs rampant among us ecumenist heretics.

One of the purposes of “Eastern Rite Anglicanism” is to use the Eastern Rite as fully as possible, allowing room for, essentially, the Uberheresy of Modernism. Ideally I’d like to build on the work of liturgical scholarship and revision that is already being done in Orthodoxy – but without the constraints or fear that many (especially the converts) seem to inflict on American Orthodox communities. How does Eastern Christianity look in the “modern world”? I know that a gay priest and LED candles are issues of two vastly different orders, no pun intended. I also know some of the Uberfrum who would say where one is, the other will follow shortly. we don’t have any doors in front of our altar either!