You can listen here to our second Fire and Light podcast called “Candles and Good Trouble.” I talk about the Feast of “Candlemas” and lighting candles as a contemplative practice, which people do around the world in various spiritual traditions. An old Chinese proverb says, “It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”

I include a candle meditation you can do in your own home with your family and friends. And I quote my mother, who burned her candles on top of the refrigerator in the kitchen (yes!) and Howard Thurman, who describes the importance of “Candles to burn the year long…. Candles of hope, where despair keeps watch, Candles of courage for fears ever present.”

Thurman, Harvard theologian and mentor to Martin Luther King, is an inspiration for Black History Month. So is Congressman John Lewis, brave leader in the Civil Rights Movement alongside Dr. King.  Dave Denny discusses March, the graphic novel which tells the story of Lewis’ life, and what we all can learn from him, especially his making “good trouble” and his greatest virtue, forgiveness. Remember what South Africa’s Desmond Tutu once said? “If you think forgiveness is easy or for weaklings, you haven’t tried it!”

Dave also describes the Feast of the “Presentation,” a day close to his heart because he arrived in Sedona, Arizona to begin his monastic life around this day almost fifty years ago. He describes the Mother of God not as a “celestial virgin” but as a “rough-hewn Mary” who fashions bread and tortillas, “a woman with a broken heart and a candle in her hand on a dark night.”

We are grateful for all your responses to our first podcast, “Living the Natural Life.” You’ve told us you like the length of the episode (good for commuters), its “human” quality and emphasis on the “ordinary.” And you’ve asked us to lengthen the time of the meditation. We will.

Special thanks to Sarah from San Diego who created her own “ad” for the first podcast on Instagram and appreciates how we model what religion and spirituality should be like: “open, kind, curious, inclusive, and accessible to everyone.” That’s our goal.