The Two Thousand Year Old Lamp

This morning I lighted a lamp. An ancient lamp. More than two thousand years old. A tiny lamp, small enough to cradle in the palm of my hand. A lamp blackened by age and fire, its finely incised decorations still visible despite millenia of burial and abuse. A broken lamp, showing a rust red scar where the tiny handle had once been. I lit this lamp.

I thought of all the years I had delayed lighting the lamp. Putting it off until some special day, some day worthy of marking. And how at that moment, on a perfectly ordinary morning I was rekindling a flame long dead. It was an act of ritual devotion. A greeting to the morning, to opportunity, to hope, to life, to Spirit.

I celebrated the unknown hands, the women, who had held this lamp in just such a way, and tended its wayward light. I saw how it must have looked, tucked into a crevice in the hardened dirt walls, illuminating the inner space, where family met perhaps to rest at the passing of a long day. It cast long shadows to my present.

Since it first came into my possession, I have waited a mere quarter century to light the lamp. Trembled at the prospect of a burning bush experience. Delayed. Procrastinated because the thing required some work, some preparation of wick and oil. I might not do it right. It might not light afterall. Now in the afterglow of Pentecost, I have simply lighted the lamp.

Scent of sandlewood oil rose in the warmth of the flame. I was one with scent and lamp and flame. New beginning. New and Ancient Presence. For a brief moment. Then the light flickered, flared, faded and died. I felt a brief a sigh of disappointment, then determination to light the lamp again. And again. And again. Until I get it right. Morning and Evening I Will light the Lamp.